How many of those did he ask Saddam Hussein? And how many answers did he press him on?

Benn: Mr President, may I ask you some questions. The first is, does Iraq have any weapons of mass destruction?

Saddam: We have no weapons of mass destruction whatsoever.

Straight question, truthful answer.

Flying Rodent never, ever agrees with anything HP says, and will disagree with it just to get people’s backs up. If he said the sea’s blue only through reflections from the sky, I would call him a tosser.

It must have been Zionist propaganda.

FFS Brownie, my comment ridiculed FR’s mention of Churchill as allegedly someone who recognized it was better not to fight Hitler and the Nazi fascists and then I referred to Khaled Meshal’s quote as cited by Tevya @ 9:04 pm, you know, the Hamas honcho who resides in Syria and who FR believes Israel should chat with and whose directives to mortar, rocket, human bomb and kidnap Israelis, the Israeli government should never defend itself from with force.

Nowhere did I state, suggest or “pretend” as you put it, that FR (whom I assume you mean when you typed FT) hates Jews, qua Jews. And while I think Livingstone is a tosser and unreconstructed ignoramus about the ME who never questions the antizionist talking points he takes at face value, I wouldn’t suggest that he hates Jews qua Jews either.

What I did suggest following FR’s comment is that FR and Ken Livingstone should get together -and in Livingstone’s case, more often- with Meshal to chat.

Now, if you were to ask me whether Meshal hates Jews qua Jews, given his statements, I’d say, damn straight he hates Jews. And if you were to ask me whether FR, or as Mesquito coined him: ‘the swooping assbat’ is too enamoured with seeing his anti-imperialism of idiocy and anti-”decent left” verbal diarrhea which he regularly churns out published in comment boxes, I’d reply in the affirmative.

We get stuck in a mythical trance and forget the facts and logic. West Bank was part of The Mandate For Palestine which stated that both Jews and Arabs could live there (as well as all that was called Palestine.

Arabs attack Jews in 1948 and Jordan illegally annexes Jerusalem and West Bank. Illegal because the Mandate states that no foreign country shall invade/annexe Palestine.

1967 and Arabs attack. Jordan loses and is expelled from West Bank and Jerusalem. Since no title as to who West Bank is stated by The UN then it must revert back to the last official status is had. That being the Mandate and the Mandate allowing both Jews and Arabs to live in West Bank.

Then you have a peace deal to CREATE a Palestinian state. Until then there can be no concept of exclusive “Palestinian Land”. It doesn’t exist. It WON’T exist until the peace process officially creates it and recognises it.

IF it were “Palestinian Land” by recognition of the UN then the UN wouldn’t broker a peace process, they would simply declare West Bank as “Palestinain Land” and tell Israel to leave – or else.

Hence, it CANNOT be Palestinian Land its disputed land.

We recognize this, because we are sane and close to the source of evil.
You don’t recognize this because it is easy to shut your ears when you are far from the source of evil.

Right on Fabian!

I wanted to write the same. The bleating Palestinians milking their own self-infliction in Gaza, for example, ONLY records 1,500 deaths from 1.5m when they also bleat about it being the most densely populated garbage tip in the World.

If Israel had simply responded proportionally with a ‘blind’ missile into Gaza for every rocket/missile fired by Hamas then the deal toll would be mabe ten thousand (ie 6,000 missiles).

Israel response, as you rightly say, are powder puff compared with what they do. Aren’t they sometimes called the Best or 2nd Best (after USA) air-force in the World? Aren’t they the sixth biggest army – or somethin?

If Israel really went for it then there would be no Palestinians in two days. (That comment is about how Israel holds back – not a desire)

Also, I note that Israel has dropped assasinations. Maybe they shouldn’t.

One of many faults with the Oslo agreements, which at the time I too supported, was that their net effect was to take a group of people who were self-proclaimed terrorists, with no experience whatsoever of processes of democratic leadership and who had in fact never lived in a normal democratic country with normal functioning systems of rule and to crown them king.
Their obvious lack of leadership credentials were all the more apparant when they were parachuted in and put in charge of a population which, although one could say were under ‘occupation’, had for over two decades been living as part of a democratic country and through contact with the Israeli authorities and people, through working in Israel and through being exposed to Israeli media and society in general, already had come a long way towards understanding and appreciating democracy.

These new leaders knew only the language of the gun, and the results were that to this day no mature, democratic, responsible leadership has been able to germinate and grow within Palestinian society, which is one of the reasons we are in such a mess today.

If our ultimate aim is for a Palestinian state which is a normal, functioning country which takes care of its citizens and lives in peace with its neighbours to be established, then it would be totally irresponsible to repeat the mistakes of Oslo. The Palestinian people have suffered enough: they do not deserve to be harnessed yet again to the yoke of tyrranical leadership by Western king-makers looking for a quick fix.

The main argument, therefore, as far as I am concerned for not dealing with a thuggish, theocratical, despotic regime which conducts both foreign and domestic policy through the barrel of a gun and employs fear as its method of engagement both externally and internally, is that the Palestinian people deserve a lot better than that.