Israel and the Palestinians

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To understand what is going on with Israel and the Palestinians, let's look at a rather peculiar scenario with the US and Mexico.  What would happen if a radical nationalistic religious sect were to take over Mexico? Let's assume that they hate the US for the War of 1846 where we "stole" California and Texas from them.

Their demands initially are that we give them back the entire southwestern US, including California. They call it the occupied Aztlán territory. As time goes on, their demands grow greater. They say that since Cortez claimed all of the mainland, Mexico must extend over all of North America. They call us the hated occupiers and say we are related to Satan -- not even human.

Execution-style killings of Americans begin to occur worldwide "in solidarity with the oppressed Mexicans". Suicide bombs go off in American cities, sometimes killing hundreds. Mexico launches thousands of randomly-directed missiles a year into San Diego, Los Angeles, Tucson, El Paso, and Brownsville.

In order to pacify the Mexicans, and since their economy is so bad they cannot feed their people, we supply them with billions of dollars of food and building materials every year.

This goes on for years, decades even. The world community supports the Mexicans, since they have always hated and envied Americans.

The US cuts the aid sent to the Mexicans, and then stops flotillas of ships claiming to be on humanitarian missions carrying food, but finds vast stores of missiles on board. The world says we are trying to starve the Mexicans. We go back to supplying their food.

The Mexican fighters have their bases in residential areas, so whenever we attack a missile base or a headquarters, the Mexicans show all the dead women and children. We attack their armored vehicles, and other countries complain that we have killed their humanitarian aid workers and peacekeepers. Over time, world opinion comes around more and more to the full radicalism of the Mexican position.

Finally, countries friendly to Mexico begin the development of nuclear missiles, and call for the destruction of the US.

So what would you do if you were the US?  And what would you do if you were Israel?

I love this photo.  Dig the guys with the shades.

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