Shockingly, the Israeli public may have voted for the right not because it rejects the idea of peace deals, partition, and a two-state solution, but because it believes the right is better qualified to find a way to carry out that undeniably painful process. "The outcome of the elections indicates that Israelis view the 'peace process' with the Palestinians as a divorce process," writes economic analyst Elah Alkalai.
"As their unwilling embrace was arranged by global forces, so apparently will be their separation. Think of it as severance of an arranged marriage, and the vote Israelis cast last week was for what they perceive as the roughest, toughest divorce lawyer in town."
Avigdor Lieberman, the hands-down success story of the election, has repeatedly outraged the far-right by suggesting in the past that some heavily Arab-populated East Jerusalem neighborhoods and refugee camps be ceded to an eventual independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza [editor: not to mention his willingness to concede to the Palestinians Arab towns within the 1967 borders.] He has consistently alientated the ultra-Orthodox - an essential building block of any right-wing dream coalition - by demanding civil-marriage and modified Jewish conversion legislation favored by Lieberman's ultra-secular constituency.
Netanyahu's Likud, the anchor of a potential rightist coalition, has been on record for years as favoring an eventual Palestinian state in the territories, as long as strict security guarantees were met. The Likud is also the only party ever to have headed a government which dismantled established settlements. Only two parties, representing just seven seats in the 120-seat Knesset, still argue for a Greater Israel. Not even the fringe-right National Union with its frankly pro-Kahane wing, dares come out in public for a return to permanent Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip, stating in its platform only that "There will be no uprooting of Jewish communities and no surrender of parts of the Land of Israel in any subsequent Israeli government led by the party."
"In other words," Alkalai concludes, "the majority vote was cast for a leadership - the right wing - that the public thinks can end the relationship with the most assets for Israelis and preferably no alimony at all for the spouse."
The Israeli Left has lost the confidence of Israelis by persuading them to put their faith in a "peace process" premised on the assumption that the dispute with the Palestinians was primarily about land, and that if Israel was willing to withdraw from land appropriated in 1967, peace would ensue. That turned out to be overly simplistic, and perhaps very naive. I recall reading several left-wing Ha'aretz columnists who claimed during the Second Intifada that the underlying problem was that the Palestinians didn't believe Israel would ever withdraw from any of the "occupied territories." Israel subsequently did withdraw, from Gaza and part of Samaria, but this led to the election of Hamas in Gaza, not to the triumph of Palestinian doves. The left still clings to its paradigm, however. The Israeli right, meanwhile, has quickly shifted to what it is at least able to portray as a "realist" approach to the Palestinians. As is usual in politics, the side that has been better able to react to events on the ground, rather than sticking to ideological presuppositions, has won--which doesn't, of course, make it right.
[Disclosure: I don't know who I'd support if I were an Israeli. I'd want someone with the free market sympathies and communication skills of Netanyahu; the secularism and willingness to confront the fact that an ever-increasing percentage of Israelis, primarily Arab and ultra-Orthodox, have no loyalty to the state as currently constituted, of Lieberman; the military experience of Barak; and the moderation of Livni, without their myriad disadvantages, including the demonstrated diplomatic incompetence of Netanyahu and Barak, the demagoguery and penchant for outrageous statements of Lieberman, and the black-boxedness of Livni.]
Even that count might be misleading, given recent news .
Does anyone really doubt that the Israelis would give just about any piece of land they have for real, lasting peace?
And does anyone really believe that, if the Israelis completely abandon Gaza and the West Bank, all terrorism will cease?
These negotiations are NOT done in good faith, and the Israelis know it. This vote reflects their desire to have someone in charge who can operate the military when the diplomacy goes south, as it surely will.
IIRC At the end of Clinton's time in office, the Israeli's agreed to a Palestinian State. To get their own State, the Palestinians only had to keep peace for three years. The Palestinians immediately rejected that agreement by violence. Why should the two state solution ever be considered again?
It will be interesting to see whether the emerging coalition government combines the strengths of all these parties, or their weaknesses.
I have no real idea if this is true in this particular case but the criticism of the left's view, as you presented it, seemed invalid. I suspect implicitly you meant to critisize the view that not only was the 2nd intafada caused by Palestinian perceptions that Israel would never cede land but that if Israel made a gesture of good faith by ceding land the Palestinians would favor a peaceful settlement.
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Just as a point of curiosity do people think the Palestinian's could have gotten a decent 2 state solution (say about as good as the camp david offer) if they had renounced terrorism in the 70s? I'm just curious because it occured to me that given the baffling continued expansion of settlements (the provocative small religious ones deep in the west bank) despite the opposition of virtually everyone who isn't part of the extreme right the extreme right in Israel has political power far in excess of their pure numbers (they have very fervent supporters and are focused). So without the impetus of terrorism would the rest of the Israeli public have had the political will to face them down to offer a 2 state solution.
No, this doesn't justify terrorism. Indeed, I think the Palestinian's would have been best served by burying the hatchet and pursuing integration into Israeli society (no Palestinian state will offer as many benefits as this would have done) but I'm just curious what people think.
I know it's tempting but it's really a mistake to analyze the situation as if Israel and the Palestinian's were individual actors. Literally speaking "The Israelis" can't be said to be willing to do anything. Some are willing and others are not. Moreover, in situations like this it's particular important to realize that actors like Israel or the Palestinian's don't simply do what a majority of their members desires. For instance the Israeli government seems to keep providing assistance to settlement expansions that most Israelis oppose. Palestinian public opinion on the eve of the election of Hamas favored ending the rocket attacks on Israel.
For the past 9 or so years majorities of both Israelis and Palestinian's have both favored a peaceful negotiated solution and agreed on it's broad outlines. Even if the Israelis and Palestinians were largely rational individual actors this would be a hard agreement to reach. Each side knows that continuing the conflict would impose a massive cost on both sides and that if it was the only way to reach peace it would be worthwhile for the other side to grant major concessions for it. Thus the best way for both sides to improve their outcome is to take the Dr. Strangelove approach and convince the other side that they are irrationally willing to continue the conflict unless they are given huge concessions despite the cost it would inflict on them.
As if this wasn't bad enough the fact that elected leaders are doing the negotiations makes it even worse. We could have had peace already if the international community would have supported an (overt) Arafat dictatorship in Palestine in return for peace. You mix in the fact that no one wants to appear weak and that pride, reelection and all the other issues this involves and it's not surprising that peace hasn't yet been reached. There are simply too many incentives for the leaders on both sides to create roadblocks and perpetuate the status quo. I mean if none of your predecessors could reach a peace agreement you won't be blamed much for failing to but going out on a limb and accepting a comprise deal that a large part of your population will see as foolishly giving away their heritage could earn you lasting hate.
This is why a real peace agreement must be reached with the help of a influential third party like the US. It's vital that we have a president who has the domestic support to carry through on threats he issues to both Israel and Palestinians if they fail to follow his lead and then twists the arms of the leaders on both sides to reach an agreement.
I realize it's very complicated. That is why I was hoping someone who knows more history could enlighten me. I wasn't suggesting any particular theory of the forces at play in the 70s just explaining what caused me to think of it.
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In my immediately prior post I guess what I'm saying is that it's both meaningless/false as well as very harmful to somehow suggest that the public on one side of this conflict or the other is somehow radically more virtuous than those on the other. It's the actions of the individual terrorist we should blame or those of the individual statesmen taking a political risk to pursue peace we should praise.
See, this may be metaphysically true, but it is practical balderdash. I understand your point, and it is valid, especially about the political motivation for continued conflict. But concerning this one point, I disagree completely. And here is why: The Israeli government has the demonstrated ability to control its population. They have removed (by military force sometimes) their own settlers from some areas congruent with agreements. This has not been uniformly the case, but they are capable of it. The palestinian organizations are completely incapable of producing a like result, largely because they've indoctrinated the last two generations in jew-hating like it was their job. Allow me to modify my question to allow for your perspective.
Do you really think that if the palestinians completely renounced violence, that random individual Israelis would begin solo-invading arab territory without any sanction from their government?
For the past 9 or so years majorities of both Israelis and Palestinian's have both favored a peaceful negotiated solution and agreed on it's broad outlines.
At least since Sep. 2000, a majority of Palestinians has supported suicide bombings in Israel (whether considered with or without the territories). That seems a little hard to square with a majority also favoring peace, unless they're using the word "peace" in a different sense. Which I suspect they might be.
There is no agreement on broad outlines either. Popular opinion to the contrary notwithstanding, the right of return is an absolute for both sides - Palestinians have been indoctrinated for generations that they will go back to the home of their grandfather (where he was for as little as two years, per the UNRWA definition); Israelis will not allow their state to be demographically overwhelmed. Some propose that Israel pay Palestinians; this is based on a profound misunderstanding of Arab culture, where it would be considered an insult. It would also be complicated b/c Israelis who left Arab countries were never compensated.
Israeli security is an absolute, while Palestinians want free movement - it's hard to square that circle. Jewish holy sites in Palestinian hands don't fare well (e.g., Rachel's tomb), so dividing Jerusalem in any way is difficult. No, I really don't see broad outlines, except in the imagination of those who think they know better.
Why the Israelis did not listen to Yigal Allon when he proposed to fix this problem 40 years ago, I will never understand.
It is indeed very complicated. True, one side appears pretty decent by and large and says the right things, by and large; and the other side says mostly horrible things and appears to be led by insane religious fanatics (who are in conflict with even more insane religious fanatics). But who knows really. And the Israelis are pretty awful to be taking land from people who are dedicated to destroying them. And we all know that the real reason Germany attacked Poland was because of the land that Poland took from Germany after Germany lost the war.
For the record, I support fewer Israeli settlements and the eventual creation of a Palestinian state. Just not this Palestinian state.
Step one: stop the current settlements from growing. Talk is cheap.
What's the alternative?
Absorb a hostile population into the larger Israel proper (hey, it isn't a GOOD alternative)
Expel all the palestinians and build a big-ass fence (downside, they know how to tunnel)
Just pull out of Gaza and West bank, then close the borders (downside, the palestinians depend on Israel for jobs and humanitarian aid, and they have medium range rockets now)
Have one of the neighboring arab countries absorb the palestinians (downside, no one seems to want a few million homicidal fanatics, and Jordan already kicked them out once)
I know none of these alternatives are very attractive, but when the option is "give them land and money so they can attack us again", they don't sound so bad. And I'm sure there are others, more obscure perhaps, or maybe I'm just too tired to think of them now.
Comparison time: in 1948, there were two refugee problems created by the Israeli war of independence. One was the palestinians, the other was the jewish communities in arab countries. Israel flew all their refugees into the country, found them work, and integrated them into society. The arab countries parked the palestinians on the Israeli border in squalid refugee camps and used them as a political weapon against the country that had just defeated them in war. It's been sixty years, the jewish refugees (and peaceful arabs who stayed) are fully integrated into Israeli life. The palestinians are the dog pound of humanity, a festering cesspool of hatred and violence. The palestinians were used, and it worked. The shame of the world is that we have never held the perpetrators responsible.
The problem with this analogy is that the Jewish population cast a much wider net for kinship purposes. Being Jewish was enough. Though honestly I'm not sure that they had much choice if they were to reach a critical population mass.
Being Muslim, or even Arab wasn't enough for the surrounding world, nor should it have to be.
I do think the situation will eventually (75-100 years from now) reach a single secular state solution. It's just going to take a lot of hurt to get there. The Israelis don't have the guts for genocide and the Palestinians don't have the cabability for it.
A more interesting point will be reached sooner however, as the Arab population inside Israel continues to grow. A population that by all reports is little happier with the Israeli government than non Israeli-Arabs.
The two-state solution - which underlies any rational peace process - is dead in the water. We Israelis have twice borne Islamic missile attacks - from Hizbollah in the north, and Hamas in the south. Twice the newspapers have printed maps showing the range of these missiles into our little country. By now, everyone has mentally made the calculation that Tel-Aviv, Haifa, and Jerusalem would be within range of these missiles from the West Bank.
We have seen the intransigence and deception - and the radicalization of Arabs on both sides of the Green Line, including within Israel. We have seen the continued terror and paramilitary attacks on us. We already had to return our military to areas in the West Bank that were previously surrendered as part of Oslo.
Any promises that the West Bank will not turn out like Gaza are worthless in the eyes of most Israelis.
Israelis voted for the people they felt most likely to withstand outside pressure and bring Oslo and other "peace processes" to a halt.
The vote for Liberman was a direct result of misguided public protests by Israeli Arabs against the Gaza incursion. They took to the streets with Hamas flags to oppose a wildly popular campaign seen by most Israelis as justified and long overdue. Considering the fiery rhetoric of Arab MKs - who wouldn't suspect them of being a fifth column?
Livni's strong showing is deceptive - she was bolstered by far-left voters who abandoned Meretz and Labor to prevent their nemesis, Netanyahu, from getting elected. The result shows just how much parties associated with two-state peace proposals have shrunk - throwing support to Livni has decimated Meretz and reduced Labor - Israel's establishment party - to a minor player. The Left is seen to be like a woman pulling her miniskirt down - they haven't got enough coverage to hide their embarrassment.
Any two-state solution is a dead end in Israeli politics. Most Israelis wanted the Gaza incursion to continue - to reoccupation and/or expulsion. Labor and Kadima did not realize the electoral boost they anticipated from the operation precisely because they pulled back.
The Israeli public no longer values such restraint, though they may not yet be willing to say so in public. We are over hoping for peace and see clearly that it is still and us-or-them situation - at least in our enemies eyes.
Do you know of any polling that confirms this?
This is simply not true.
And not at all because attempts at Palestinian governance has been abortive at best?
I freely admit that the inability of the palestinian government to control factions within their own "government" much less their own citizens is a serious problem, but to expect that a government would have such power when it has essentially no independent base of support is somewhat laughable.
The Israelis, on the other hand, cannot negotiate with a single palestinian organization. They negotiated with Fatah/PLO, got an agreement, and Islamic Jihad, Hamas and Hizbollah just kept hammering them. Even if they make peace with every one of these organizations, a new one would crop up claiming more concessions. How likely is that? The cat of jew-hating is out of the bag, so to speak. The reality of the matter is that there is a significant portion of palestinians who will not be satisfied until Israel is destroyed. This coupled with the lack of a leadership strong enough to enforce any agreement makes negotiation virtually untenable for the Israelis. If I thought there was a peaceful solution, I would advocate it. There isn't. This can only end with the demise of Israel or the complete defeat of the palestinians. Personally, I prefer that Israel win.
It's a frustrating situation... especially when insignificant demands are made. But each time one side says no for whatever provision, they are saying that the provision is worth risking life for. So I hope whatever comes about.. I hope they consider that on both sides.
Didn't Kadima force the evacuation of the settlements in Gaza? Or was Sharon still in Likud then?
Yes, those are alternatives. I suppose what I should have asked was, "What's the viable alternative?"
A viable alternative is for the Israelis to take complete control of the strip and West Bank, and over the course of the next few generations Israelify the occupants. Of course this would bring howls from the IL crowd, but Israel doesn't seem to need them all that much. I doubt Egypt or Jordan would do much to oppose this, however a great deal of forced relocation would need to happen in order to move people away from those borders and cut down on smuggling.
The Israelis aren't willing to see a PA with enough strength that internal order could be maintaided against the various factions, so they need to take up that job themselves.
Does it destroy the idea of a religious state? Most likely, but that seems like it's fading with time anyway. What is kept is the liberal Western democracy.
Or we can just wait around for WW3 and the problem will solve itself, no matter who wins.
I mean who wouldnt choose a liberal democracy with a vibrant economy for a future 3rd world country. Why does Israel have to allow palestinians in to work. It shoul dnot be th eresponsibility of one country to provide work for the other, but still this is always mentioned that the border crossings aren't open so the Palestinians can't go to work?
Unless, of course, out of all the states created from the defeated Ottoman Empire, only Israel is less than legitimate from time out of mind -- a corollary of the basic principle that anything a Jew buys or builds is by definition stolen goods and free for the taking by anyone else.
It's debatable whether your solution is viable. I'd say not. Regardless, I doubt most Israelis are as sanguine as you are about that sort of demographic suicide.
The Qassams that followed the Gaza withdrawal killed my remaining confidence in a two state solution. But that only means I'm not resigned to it being (paraphrasing Churchill) the worst solution except for all the others.
not=> nowMost Israelis wanted the Gaza incursion to continue - to reoccupation and/or expulsion.
and LM asked:
Do you know of any polling that confirms this?
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Yes. There were many such polls during the campaign - all showing high approval rates among Jewish Israelis. The most widely publicized such poll showed that 85 percent supported the incursion, and wanted it to continue.
During the campaign, the left tried to organize a "mass rally" in Tel-Aviv. The turnout was embarrassingly small - news reports ranged from "dozens" to "a thousand" protesters. This indicates that many center-left, Zionist Labor voters are rethinking their association with Meretz-style "extreme peacemaking".
In addition, there were polls showing strong dissatisfaction with the decision to stop short of occupying Gaza city. And as the voting results show, neither Livni nor Barak (who ran with the "Mr. Security" slogan "at the moment of truth - Barak") got a "bounce" from the Gaza campaign - in fact just the opposite occurred. One very effective Likud billboard implied that Livni was overwhelmed by Gaza, and unable to lead under pressure.
And while we're talking about campaign billboards - after pollsters identified unease with Netanyahu among left-wing voters, Kadima plastered Tel-Aviv and other left-wing bastions with billboards that said "only Livni can beat Bibi". The resulting last-minute surge of hard-left voters is what floated Livni's boat.
This slogan led some Israelis to comment that they thought our real enemy was Hamas, not Netanyahu - again, a comment that indicates that events have overtaken old Oslo-era political assumptions, and that most Israelis see the left's obsessive focus on occupation and peacemaking as misguided.
David, why no comments on your last post? Did you think that your implication that every Gazan killed, from infants to grannies, was an armed terrorist would go unnoticed? Or did you just not want it remarked on?
Wrong. At the 1974 Rabat Summit Conference, Jordan and other Arab nations recognized the PLO as the sole representative of the Palestinians in the occupied territories.
So?
Why would the PLO have been affiliated with the USSR?
A big problem has been that US vetoes have prevented the UN Security Council from taking appropriate action in regard to Israel. In the period 1972-2006, none of the other 14 members of the UN Security Council ever voted "no" in support of any of approximately 40 US vetoes of resolutions aimed at Israel, and in the period 1988-1997 there was an unbroken string of ten 14-1 such vetoes (i.e., no abstentions). You know that there is no excuse for that, David.
I'm not sure human beings can be countrified. Can we annex Canada and United-Statesify them?
I don't understand your question. Why does anybody affiliate with anybody else?
What in the hell is the difference? Sheesh.
I am questioning the whole idea that the PLO was ever "affiliated" with the USSR.
Yankev moaned,
Here we go again -- Yankev with his ad hominem attacks.
As I said before, my position is that a "systematic" Jewish holocaust was impossible because the Nazis had no objective and reliable ways of identifying Jews and non-Jews. In regard to this issue of Jew identification, the introduction to the book "IBM and the Holocaust" by Edwin Black says,
The book claims that the Nazis identified all of the Jews of Europe by using primitive IBM Hollerith machines to process data stored on billions of IBM Hollerith cards, but that is absurd. Even if all the necessary data had been available, those primitive machines simply did not have such data-processing capability -- all they could do was just read, sort, and merge a few cards at a time.
The palestinians have legitimate claims.
- - - - - - - -
This has been recognized by both the Israelis and the international community since the initial partition of the area was proposed post WWI. The Jews also have legitimate claims - many of the most ancient Jewish historical sites are in what is now called the "West Bank" - but they accepted the compromise position.
In the real world, 60 years of violent rejection of any compromise count against those who refuse compromise, and answer peaceful overtures with violence.
You speak so bravely about "justice"!
Do you (and others calling for "justice") recognize the legitimate attachment of the Jews to the area - and their legitimate right to live in peace?
How exactly do you define "justice" - is it just a code word for the Left-wing agenda of supporting the dark-skinned, non-Judeo-Christian party in ANY conflict, no matter how they behave?
So when Edwn Black says that Jew identification was a big problem for the Nazis, he is an "expert." When I say the same thing, I'm a crackpot.
You're just upset that I blew a big hole in your holocaust dogma, that's all.
If you just "blew a big hole in [my] holocaust dogma," my holocaust dogma being that it happened, aren't you denying that it happened?
I guess what I'm getting at is, why do you object to being called a holocaust denier? I'd think you would embrace the term.
But since you do seem to reject that description, and you didn't answer my question the first time, you force me to "moan" again: What distinguishes your views from those of someone you would consider a Holocaust denier?
Most so-called holocaust "deniers" are really holocaust "revisionists" -- they say that the holocaust was exaggerated, not that there was no holocaust at all. For example, Richard Williamson, the Catholic bishop recently charged with holocaust denial, said that he believed that there were no gas chambers and that only 200-300,000 Jews died in the holocaust.
Correct me if I'm wrong, Larry, but here's what I understand you to be saying: Though "holocaust denier" more accurately describes your views than those of the middle of the road revisionists to whom it's usually applied, you want no part of it now that those milquetoast weenies have sullied it by their association.
Is that about right?
If you are talking about the holocaust in general, then I am a revisionist. If you are talking about a "systematic" holocaust, then I am a denier.
Yankev, where has this been addressed "ad nauseum", either by you or anyone else, here or on other threads?
While I don`t put all the blame on the Israelis, I think it is generally a fair point. It`s actions at times fuel the radicals, and at other times it has appeared to follow a divide and conquer policy. That it doesn`t have any unified Palestinian power structure to deal with is in part its own fault.
You really must get clearer his thinking. For example, does he think the Nazis went about their campaign to exterminate the Jews, all of them, in a random or haphazard way, hence his "unsystematic"? Does he mean that it could be said that the Nazis did it in fits and starts, not always maintaining the same pace and intensity of effort? That they devoted themselves too much to prosecuting the war against the Allies, not enough to the genocidal task? Is he calling it an unsystematic holocaust because a remnant of Jews survived the war, so the Nazi's work wasn't taken to completion? I believe that the Holocaust was singular, but if we allow comparison to what befell the Armenians, the Cambodians, and Tutsi in Rwanda, would Larry Fafarman, who has returned to these boards numerous time to make his ahistorical claims, call those unsystematic holocausts too? (Certainly a great many Tutsis were brutally murdered in Rwanda for no reason other than their ethnicity, along with some Hutus who didn't enthusiatically participate in the murders, perhaps 800,000 Tutsis and Hutus in all, but it was rather a slapdash affair over the course of a few months rather than a well-organized, sustained systematic effort, wasn't it?)
LM, if you want a good grade for your psychiatry rotation, you must get more of the psychiatric history. The present medical history needs to include a more complete explication of his delusions, and the past medical history details of how his thinking developed and evolved over time; his upbringing; family; interpersonal relationships; experiences in school and life generally, etc. (If you Google him, you will see something of how he has fared as a lawyer.) LM, you are not expected to perform at the level of a senior resident in psychiatry, let alone a board certified specialist, but you are expected to perform at the level of a junior medical student doing his/her junior year psychiatry rotation, or come close to it.
Let's get as much of it out here as we can (we will never get it all, since we are decidedly limited in what we can do here by way of psychiatric assessment), but we should be able to get enough to satisfy the curiosity of those who are curious about Larry Fafarman's psychopathology. If we do, then we should not be necessary to redo this over and over in the future.
You have undertaken to play psychiatrist where Larry Fafarman is concerned. Now, do the best job you can of it.
Now, before this thread closes out, which I expect will happen later today, will Farfarman return here to elaborate further on his answers to LM's questions, and to the additional ones I would have LM ask him?
If you call me a crackpot for saying that identifying Jews and non-Jews was a big problem for the Nazis, then you must call Edwin Black -- author of "IBM and the Holocaust" -- a crackpot for the same reason (he is in fact a crackpot for a different reason -- saying that the Nazis were able to do it by means of primitive IBM Hollerith card machines).
All of these questions -- except perhaps the last one -- are irrelevant in regard to my point that the Nazis had no objective and reliable ways of identifying Jews and non-Jews.
The Cambodian holocaust was random. I don't know how the Armenians and Tutsis were identified -- by language? By place of residence? In contrast, many of the alleged "Jewish" victims of the holocaust were assimilated and lived among their "non-Jewish" neighbors.
You are really getting desperate -- how does that address my argument that the Nazis had no objective and reliable ways of identifying Jews and non-Jews?
Your minds are simply closed -- you are not open to new ideas about the holocaust.
I do admit to a morbid fascination with the psychopathology of any reasonably intelligent Holocaust denier who isn't simply lying. And I assume for purposes of these discussions that everyone expresses his honest beliefs. On the other hand, the details of his fantasy only interest me insofar as they shed light on the psychopathology.
But my objective here was only for Mr. Farfarman to admit he denies the Holocaust (as most people understand that term), occurred. Now that he's done that for all to see and draw their conclusions from, my ability to engage him civilly on this subject may be exhausted. I'll certainly follow what remains of the thread to see if he elaborates as you requested, but there's also a point at which even morbid curiosity extracts a price. If that suggests I'm not suited to a profession in the healing arts, I regretfully reached the same conclusion long ago.
- The Nazis were the ultimate antisemites and desired to kill off every last person that they regarded as Jewish?
- Somewhere between 4,000,000 and 6,000,000 were murdered for no other reason than that the Nazis regarded them as Jews, by whatever criteria the Nazis employed?
How about a clear answer to those most straightforward questions?
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