[The_Reader_David]

The one aggrieved group in the world today who would do well to imitate Gandhi are the Palestinians. Although some Israelis have become brutal, vicious and insensitive toward anyone except fellow Jews, the American Jewish community who back them, and, I think, a majority of Israelis would readily grant a Palestianian state, and possibly even cede some of East Jerusalem if instead of their mad tactics of turing their young people into guidance systems for bombs (which only alienate possible supporters in the West by dehumanizing the Palestinians through their own actions), they adopted Gandhi's tactics.

It would be hard for the Palestinians, but martyrs deaths which imitate the Jewish martyrs at Massada or in the days of the Maccabees and are recognizably martyr's deaths to Jews and Christians, rather than the twisted "martyrdom" of Qutb's existentialist reimaging if Islam would win the day. Following Qutb's notion of martyrdom will only lead to decades more of death on both sides and no Palestinian state.

[Sonny M]

You make a good point, but the quran specifically prohibits and bans even the concept of pacifism. For them to use non-violent means, in the eyes of the arab world, would enrage other arabs, infurate the religious fundamentalists, and leave them vulnerable. It doesn't help, that arabic thinking is very different in some other senses, they don't want to be given a land, they want to take it. Its a concept that americans can't understand. If you offer them a mile of land, they'll fight you for more, and make sure the deal falls apart, but if they think they fought you and won an inch, they can actually be happy. Getting land, in there eyes is like getting a handout, they want to take, not have something given to them, there are many religious roots to this thinking.