I am 81 years old - I remember the creation of the state of Israiel by the United Nations and aplauded it as reparation fot the Holocaust which the world at large had just learned of. What I, and a great many other people, failed to realise was simply this-to give land to the jews it had to be taken from the arabs who were powerless to prevent it!!! During the seven day war when the arabs abortively tried to recover their land they lost even more and the Israilies have used the most represive measures to prevent any further attempts. Their Nazi percecutors must be very proud of how much the jews learned at their hands .

I tried to put a commentary on but apparently my comment was not politically correct, John Smith in his commentary apparently has no knowledge of the history of Israel. This land was promised to the Jew thousands of years ago, Most of the inhabitants now ( Palestinean ) are from Jordan, but that really isnt the point, the land was promised to the Jew or the desendants of Abraham thru Issaic. There will be no peace in Israel.

Austintacious relys on the old sad tired rhetoric of entitlement through divine favour, but noone takes this serously. The levant has been majority arabic for more than 600 years, and while true semitic Mizrahi Jews still dwelt and thereby maintained a link with the ancient hebrew kingdom of bilical times, this is not the basis for an ethnic jewish state to be created at the expense of the non-Jewish majority. What we refer to as the modern state of Israel is a Zionist colonisation project no different to the Dutch settlement of southern Africa. Force of arms and economic/financial support from the Western world is used to dispossess and forceably displace the indigenous peoples, while those few remaining are subjected to widespread discrimination and prejudice, and must exist witjhin teh state as disenfranchised 2nd class citizens. Israel has become an abomination. It is a racist apartheid state, that borders on outright fascist behaviour. It deserves no support from the rest of the world, and all progressive and forward thinking people should reject it as such.