>From a friend of mine who is famous for moderation and is not prone to
exaggeration. Although he means "lynched" metaphorically.
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Subject: another notch
I don't think that even in the early 1980s there was such an atmosphere of "being hot for war". The level of debate has reached a new low and people are losing all common sense. It seems that in the common news-speak, the fact that these settlers in the Gaza strip are not supposed to be there in the first place, that for years "normal" people have asked to evacuate them, that lawyers have even tried to sue them for child neglect and that the "Council for Child Protection" has claimed for years now that these parents put their children at risk with the armed convoys to school -- all that has suddenly vanished from memory. Everybody forgot that Rabin called these people obstacles to peace. But then they killed him and nobody, not Peres, not Yahoo, and of course not Barak dares to talk about them like Rabin did. Everybody forgets that these people are religious fanatics who put their ideology and zeal even in front of their kids. These are not Palestinian kids living in the most miserable of conditions and going out to demonstrate against Israeli soldiers. These are people who live at the expense of the Israeli tax payer in the most beautiful of houses and gardens in midst of one of the biggest refugee camps in the world - 1,200 settlers surrounded by more than 1 million refugees with nothing to eat. And now, they became "our heroes", our martyrs and the country is screaming for blood. So that overnight, we bombed Gaza and killed innocent people in our revenge and spite. And if I would say to others what I told you now, I would be lynched as well.
<end letter>