I Don't Understand the Israel/Palestinian Problem

Just for the record, as I read your posts and Percy's, it's not Percy who looks like a sympathizer. It looks like Percy's just looking at the facts, asking if there's something missing, and you're flipping out, because the only thought on your mind is getting Sharon out of the position he's in.None of your "unmentioned" looked very pertinent to me.I'm only up to message 8 of 11, so maybe something's different later, but as someone interested in this discussion, you're not getting your message across. It's clear to me you don't like Sharon, and you will put the worst possible interpretation on his actions, but there's nothing clear about what you're saying, except maybe to those who are totally informed on the Palestinian situation.Maybe you could be a little more clear about when these "backslides" happened, and why you think the backslides are worse cause of violence that actual performance of violence that the Hamas did.Also, it would help if when someone asks for information, you didn't reply with "You ask me what were the backslides? Are you kidding?" I don't think he was kidding, and I think his question was legitimate enough to warrant a plain response.

LOL. I use FM 94.3's 5 minute news highlights at the top of the hour, if I happen to be in the car at the time. Otherwise, I have a couple of friends who watch the news several times a week, and occasionally I overhear them talking about it.I didn't jump in because I'm knowledgeable. I jumped in, because you obviously have strong feelings, and only your strong feelings were being communicated (IMHO). Maybe it was only difficult for me to hear you because I'm so ignorant of the subject, but it was definitely easier to follow what Percy was saying, and I think, to borrow some terminology I hate, you were generating more heat than light. I just thought if the heat were turned down, it would be easier to see what you're saying.I'm not disinterested, but access to world news and time for world news doesn't come easy to me. This discussion seemed enlightening, and I was interested, so it seemed good to help you communicate (if I was even helping, which I hope). See above. That's clear. That's why I asked, to get an answer like this. This does not seem very different from what Percy is saying.In fact, this statement seems to be on Percy's topic, not yours (which is more focused on Sharon), and it addresses Percy's original question and comes very close to agreeing with how he sees it, except that you're adding a little information as to why. Neither your description of the events since June 25, nor Percy's, seem to indicate that Sharon assassinated individuals or arrested innocents in roundups since the cease fire except as direct retaliation to suicide bombings.Did I miss something? I know you said that his prisoner release wasn't as good a gesture as we might think, and that he was building walls that provoked Hamas and Jihad leaders, but it doesn't appear that he assassinated anyone or rounded up anyone during times of no violence. Yeah, I caught that after I posted.For some reason, I managed to hear quite a bit about Sharon's background one day on NPR back when he was still just a candidate. I'm aware it's terrible, and I was pretty surprised he was elected, but I know how it is to feel like there's not a lot of good choices for a national leader. Yeah, it's half way, like most of the West's strategies, as far as I can see. It seems like a nation ought to be either for winning any wars or they're in, or they ought to be against war. Quite often, it doesn't seem to me like western nations never make that choice.Perhaps it was evil for Bush to attack Iraq. I don't know. I do know that I think it is stupid (without addressing morals) to attack a country without a plan to win decisively as quickly as possible. Bush did that, and so even if he's immoral, I don't think he's stupid.Without knowing enough of what's going on, it looks to me like the Israeli-Palestinian plan is to keep fighting forever and never have peace. I don't think if I was Israel's leader, I could do that. I'd either have to focus on peace with everything in me and try to co-exist with the Palestinians, making as many concessions as I could, or I'd have to focus on making the land mine in whatever way I could, even if it meant assassinating a leader every day.I haven't seen anything from either of them that is all the way in either direction, and it sounds like both Percy and you are telling me that if it's peace they want, both sides are being stupid about it. If it's winning a war they want, neither side is getting close. It's only if they want to keep fighting forever that it looks like they're accomplishing their goals.Should I have seen something different wrong with their strategy?

Thank you, Holmes.

Someone finally asked me! Yay!At my son's 13th birthday party, we went down to our village's tent, which is about 40x80 and has a straw floor. We use it for village meetings and other events.My wife and I had a pillow fight with about a dozen 12-14 year olds (which didn't turn out too bad, because they attacked each other, too), and then I wrestled about six or seven of them at once in the straw. In the process my ponytail was pulled free, and my hair became a real vision problem.Finally, in exhaustion, I sat down on a hay bale by the wall of the tent and a 10-year-old jumped on me. Too tired to push him away, I tried to roll him over me, but in the process, I slipped off the bale into the ditch that channels water around the tent. It had about six inches of water in it.This was found to be very humorous to everyone there, and a young lady who was present photographed me climbing out of the small ditch.That's the photo. Not being very knowledgeable about the whole thing, it has appeared to me over the years that Arafat was an extremist who got wiser as he got older. I heard on the news today (94.3 FM--I had to go to Lowe's this afternoon) that Israel fired a missile at a Hamas leader, killing one and injuring about 26, but the leader escaped uninjured.I have to admit it doesn't sound like Sharon has toned down enough in his old age.

LOL. We moved 35 families onto a 75-acre farm with one farmhouse between May 25 and July 20 of 1999. We mostly used buses and tents to make this happen, although we did bring two single-wide mobile homes with us. A friend and I drove to an army surplus store in Texas to get a kitchen tent (yes, quite MASH-style) and another moderately large tent as a "guest house."Yes, we actually had a family come visit during that time. It rained non-stop while they were here, and the first night a cat came in their tent and had kittens in one of their sleeping bags.The family left Hawaii and moved onto the land with us six months later. Go figure.In the last four years, we have built three cabins, four small houses, one large house, and we have two large houses with electric in, but not drywall or carpet. We've added one mobile home, and we are in the process of purchasing five double-wides, which will get most of us in houses. The rest are still in converted buses.We became a community in Florida as circumstances (single mom's, lost jobs, people moving to be close) led to the homes there almost all turning into two or three family homes. Seventeen families moved together to Tennessee when it became clear a bunch of us in Tennessee wanted to be a part of what they were doing.We moved in 1996 onto a piece of farmland. We expanded two houses (one became 17-bedroom and had 60 people in it, with a kitchen that fed over 100 people, some living in RV's, at every meal), built another one, and bought the two mobile homes that would be moved to the new land three years later. We did all this at the invitation of the property owners. After a couple years, though, it became clear they didn't like us, so we offered to buy their land. They tried to evict us instead. They messed up the process bad, though, so they lost in court, but we moved in that two month period I mentioned, anyway. Who wants to be where they're not wanted? One guy, who left right after that because he thought we were stupid, figured out we walked away from over 200,000 dollars of expenditures on that land.But we've hand fun building up this one. We got the tent for a song a couple years ago. We have awesome festivals a couple times a year, and we always invite the public to a day or two of them. We do horsemanship shows, singing, dancing, games, and food. We have a Celtic band, a dance troupe, and a folk group that writes its own music. Last year I got to be in a fire dance with flaming machetes along with several other men and some of our teenagers.We have a real, actual village, and it's a lot of fun. I plug my computer into the wall of our greatly overtaxed mobile home that has two families in it. We are building an addition on it that will make it 2800 sq. ft., but before it's done I'm trading houses with a single mom of six kids. I'm moving into the beat up cabin she lives in, hopefully to fix it up or to hang out until I or we can afford a mobile home or build something new.Just as a side note, I got a satellite internet receiver put on the side of this house, then figured out how to wirelessly network the computers in the houses and buses on the hill I'm on, so we have about six families sharing the connection, plus three or four of our young people.Our fall festival, which we call the Ingathering, is coming up the first weekend of October. You're welcome to come.

Religious based. Originally we were just good Bible-believing Christians trying to see the "unity of the Spirit." It seemed silly to us that Christ prayed "...that they may be one, even as you and I are one," but there's 22,000 denominations in the United States.We talked to all the churches, but they just ended up not liking us very much. In the process, we had to take care of some families having problems, so we moved them into our houses or bought them used mobile homes, and ended up living together.So uniting Christians was given up as an utter waste of time, and we just tried to ask God what he wanted us to do. We couldn't figure anything out for a while. It seemed like the only thing God had for us was to learn to be together.We think we figured out why. As Christians we knew nothing at all about loving one another or living in unity, which is why it was such a waste of time trying to unite our "brothers and sisters in Christ." Christianity, as practiced in the United States, is a prescription for division, disagreement, closed-mindedness and close-mindedness' brother, bigotry.So we had to CHANGE. We had to change a lot. It was a gradual, but pretty quick and rather painful process. We learned along the way that what had to matter to us was the love and unity we spoke of, not issues. We love truth. Truth matters to us. We like to know the answers to our issues, but we believe God is the giver of answers, and he gives answers to those who can put themselves aside and care more about what happens to the other person than about issues.Here's our conclusions after about 12 years. We don't know much of anything. If the Bible's literal, what's it matter, because we sure can't be trusted to understand it, apply it well, or do anything with it except hurt other people with our opninions. Above all, though, if we look to God, realize how little our opinions can be trusted, then he'll get us through every situation we're in, and in those situations we'll learn things that are reliable, instead of those awful opinions that we had that failed us and everyone else. See above Thank you. I think it's interesting. I know it's unusual. We've looked all over for something resembling what we're doing. We'd love to find others like us. Think what fun that would be! In order to do that, we've driven to New England, California, Florida, Indiana, and Missouri, as well as several places in Tennessee. What disappointments we've had. Admittedly, we haven't followed through real well on the non-religious groups like Twin Oaks in NC or one we know about in Arkansas. We'd like to find someone who shares our belief in Christ.The early days of the Farm in Tennessee may have been similar to us, even though they were hippies, not Christians. They've gotten old and uninterested now, though, or so it seems from the visits I've made there.

Ach, terribly sorry! I just saw your post! What should I do?

Thanks. I did that.