<HTML>Joanna:  << 1. Most Jews did NOT live in Palestine. >> <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px"></BLOCKQUOTE> And with the exception of the African-Americans in Liberia, NO settlers in any of the world's NUMEROUS settler states lived in the settled area prior to the establishment of the settler nation-state. And again with the exception of the African-Americans in Liberia, NO settlers had any historical origins in the settled area. So if Israel has one of the better records on this count as settler states go, why do you insist upon singling it out as if it were the worst, and demand its destruction? << <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">2. The Arab states expelled the Jews in retaliation for the expulsion of the Palestinians. >> </BLOCKQUOTE> This is a step up from Matthew's argument that the Jews were not expelled, but took off on their own because they didn't know how good they had it in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and so on, but it is just barely so. While you are busy explaining how the anti-Semitism of Arab states is all the fault of Israel, maybe you can explain why the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem decided to link up with the Nazis during WWII before the state of Israel was ever founded. <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">3. If the United States had had a proactive immigration policy toward the displaced/traumatized Jews of Europe following WWII, most jews would NOT have emigrated to Palestine. But let's see, if memory serves, American jews played NO part at all in urging such a policy. Those unwashed eastern european jews would have made them look bad... </BLOCKQUOTE> Oh, dear me, now American Jews are responsible for the failure of the American government to accept Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. I guess I just forgot how they secretly ran the government. Is there anything bad that hapens to Jews that they do not cause to happen themselves? BTW, your memory might be a whole lot more accurate if you looked up some of the scholarship, sich as David Wyman's books, on the subject. Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869) Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. -- Frederick Douglass -- </HTML>