Reply #13: Wordie, which do you really think, even if Israel were a factor,

[Colorado Blue]

was the most IMPORTANT factor: Israel or oil?

There's a disturbing trend afoot, to pin the blame for Iraq on Israel and/or on American Jews, when the overwhelming evidence indicates that Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush, representing powerful industrial concerns, were interested in Saddam and in Iraq, for years.

I think that it is a very dangerous, as well as a very misleading, idea, to attempt to focus on "the Jewish question" in this way. In fact it is disturbingly reminiscent of 1920's Europe.

Also, the idea that Israel should be strong and defensible is not a bad or a rightwing idea. Rather, having a strong, Western, democratic state that is economically part of a developing Middle East makes sense. It makes sense for the people of the region as well as for America. Only those who continue to be focused on the idea that Israel is evil and should be destroyed, can't see the fact that an end to strife between Arab and Israeli equals vastly improved prospects for everybody concerned, and find this idea problematic.

As an example: Israeli desalinization and irrigation techniques are the best in the world. Does it make sense to beat up the people who have the best chance of helping produce the one resource more valuable than oil - WATER?

And, what is to be served by having a weak and helpless Israel, besides creating the probability of another Holocaust?