Let me just say (for clarity sake), I was as horrified as anyone else when those planes crashed into the towers and the Pentagon. It may have been even more painful for me as it was a possibility/probability that I had been predicting for SO many years, and it made me angry as hell because no one would listen until it was too late. Sadly, What goes up, must come down. What goes around, comes around. Natural law. Karma. Call it whatever you want. There are penalties for screwing up, whether its done out of stupidity or just following bad advice for what you thought were good reasons. America has screwed up time and time again, insulting entire nations for the sake of its 'special friend'.
There is no way to escape the fact that there is only one religion that I know of (and I've studied them all) that does not have as one of its main tenets the basic philosophy of: 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto to you'. That one phrase, IMHO, is all the 'religion' we ever really needed. But, of course, it won't work as long as there's one belief system that considers itself to be superior to all others in the eyes of G-d and demands to be viewed as such by all others. Theres no need to follow any silly golden rules if you're so superior. That's only for stupid cattle, right? And that's a blueprint for a disaster of epic proportions.
The Israel/Ishmael thing is a blood feud that the entire world has been dragged into willynilly because Muslims refuse to accept the self-proclaimed designation demanded by Jews that G-d chose them over all others to be His 'favorites' and therefore are entitled to anything they want of this earth no matter whom they have to take it from or how they have to get it ... and when they don't get it, they're victims.
Your revised history of the creation of Israel has deleted so much brutality perpetrated against the native people of Palestine that the whole thing is rendered totally invalid by default.
We got this far without getting into the whole Israel thing, I was hoping to avoid it.
I try to only concern myself with thing that can be changed. The fact that Israel is there, and is full of Jews, is unchangeable. They ain't leaving. I don't say that because I love Jews and hate Arabs, it's just a fact. Just like the "white" man lives in the U.S. No matter how bad the methods were to rid the land of the "red" man, we are here, and nothing's gonna undo that. Just like nothing's gonna undo Israel. And regardless of all the arguments for and against, or who did what to whom, the answer to one question keeps entering my mind when I think of who's the good guys, and who's the bad guys in that situation. That question is,
If Israel gave all the land they acquired after the wars with Arabs, back to their previous occupiers, and Israel never fired a shot in anger toward any Arab, would that lead to peace in the middle East?
My answer to that, as of now, is NO. I sincerely believe that there will be, in the least, terrorist attacks designed to kill as many Jews as possible, and at worst, another full scale war to rid the region of Jews forever.
It has nothing to do with religion or race to me. It's just my belief according to what I know to be true. And believe me, I've heard both sides. I've been reading these threads on FR for a long time now. I've followed links from both sides, learned all I could, and that's how I come down.
But I don't believe for a single second that ObL gives a hoot about the plight of the Palestinians. I've seen every announcement he's made available to the U.S. in all these years, and he has never, ever given the Palestinians a mention until after he knew the hammer was coming down on him. And it was only to attempt to mobilize the Arab world to be with him, against the U.S.A.
Anybody that would purposely aim to end the lives of innocent non combatants, or incite others to do so, in order to advance some political, or religious opinion, deserves to be removed from the earth. Arafat is one, and Osama is another.