Dear Left-Wing Fanatic, The palestinians have always used Israel\'s connection to the Holocaust and their perceived victimhood as a means to justify their own hatred and self-pity, murders and other sickening actions against Jews and others in the region - as well as to themselves. They never cease to regard themselves as the true victims and they\'d rather sit there taking handouts, being the world\'s largest recipients of such handouts, instead of getting up on their feet and take REAL action and start making a LIVING instead of preaching death to their children and the killing of everyone that don\'t agree with their culture of death. I don\'t think I agree with much that you say, if anything, but that doesn\'t mean I wish to kill you. However, where I live, my neighbour will gladly kill me for being what I am and not for what I do or say - and he or she firmly believes that this is God\'s will. How does that make me feel? Well, it doesn\'t make me want to run away if that\'s what you think. I am more certain than ever that this is where I belong and that this is where I will remain. You call it \"an ethnic cleansing of Palestine\". This is the strangest \"ethnic cleansing\" I have ever heard of. From being 700 000 refugees, there are now millions of them. Isn\'t an \"ethnic cleansing\" supposed to have the opposite effect? What happened to the 800 000 Jewish refugees from the Arab countries, that left around that same time? Why are they not encamped in refugee camps, living in poverty and misery, receiving handouts and the world\'s pity? What happened to the Jews\' belongings, their homes, their money? Do you think they were allowed to take it with them when they left the Arab countries? And where do you think they went? Yes, that\'s right, nearly 600 000 of them ended up in Israel. Does Israel have a \"right to exist\"? you ask. This is such a strange question - as if a nation should have to ask for the right to be alive and live in their own country. From what other people do we ask this? There are still nations in the world suffering - the Kurds for instance. They have their own culture, their own lands, their own language. But they don\'t have their own country. What do the Palestinians have? And what have they been offered? And how many times? And how many times have they said no? And started what instead? Who live in the houses the Jews used to live in, in Iraq, in Iran, in Yemen etc? Why don\'t the Jews kill Moslems for their right to return to their former homes? What makes you believe it was the Jews who drove the Arabs away in 1948? At that time everyone living in the British Mandate of Palestine were called \"Palestinians\" and many of them arrived there with their families as the Palestinian Jews arrived in order to make a living as the Palestinian Jews provided work - for everybody, even immigrant Arabs from neighbouring countries. \"Palestine\" was the name the Romans once gave the occupied territory - in order to erase all traces of the Jews. But that doesn\'t mean that the country was empty after

the Jews were exiled - or empty of Jews. They didn\'t just show up there after the war, like colonialist conquerors. What makes people think that they did? Who said so? And why? Why are the Islamic propagandists so intent on denying the Jews their history and their homeland? Why do they say there was never a temple in Jerusalem, never mind two of them? Why do they claim Jews have no connections to the country, in spite of numerous evidence to the contrary? What is it that they are so afraid of? In 1948 the Palestinians were born as a people, not before, and they have - of course - a right to their own country. The problem is that they just don\'t want to share it. With anybody. Especially not the Jews. The Palestinians know that their \"return\" means the end of Israel - and that\'s why they are driving this issue just as they are driving the issue of never ever accepting Israel as a fact, or recognizing Israel as a state - as if they had their own. That\'s the only thing that is needed - for the Palestinians to recognize Israel and admit that they have a right to live and exist. Then the talk can begin. But how can you talk to a terrorist government that preaches the destruction of your state, your home, your life? And you call the Israelis what? \"The 1948 war was planned and and provoked by Israel to gain more territory than the U.N. had allotted for the Jewish state and to expel more Palestinian Arabs.\" you say. Of course - blame the Jews. That\'s what you do best. Not a word of course about the Arab leaders encouraging the Palestinian Arabs to get out in order for them to wipe out the Jews and then return triumphantly - that was the plan. Oh no, the Jews WANTED to be attacked by 5 or 6 Arab countries\' armies - it\'s every Jew\'s dream to be slaughtered by invading enemies! I am a Zionist - and as opposed to many, I know what that word actually means: It means the right to self determination and the right to live in peace in your own country. The Palestinians could do well to try that for a change. The peace bit I mean. It seems to be hard for them as they do nothing but encourage violence and hatred. If you are told there is no hope, eventually you lose it. If you are told you might as well die, you eventually come to believe that. If you are told that Paradise is better than your present miserable existence, then there will never be a shortage of suicide murderers lining up. If you are told Jews are pigs and monkeys and don\'t have the right to live, that you are superior to them, then it\'s not difficult for you to kill them. Not at all. Just like the children were indoctrinated in Nazi Germany, so are the children being indoctrinated in the schools in the Moslem world today. They will grow up to believe that a Jew is inferior and you\'d do best to kill him - in fact, you will be doing the world a favour! These children are the heirs of Hitler and his ilk, the brainwashed human cannon fodder of today - and how does it feel to know that you could have stopped it, if you had just given it some thought? This is not about who is right and who is wrong - this is about loving life - or taking it. Ilan Pappé is the left-wing fanatics\' pet whom they love to quote as if he had any academic standing or credibility. He is a sad and self hating human being with no credibility in any academic circles. I think one should listen to everybody, but only fools take his words to heart - and there are plenty of them, I\'m afraid. I am not afraid of an open debate, but I am afraid of people who listen to people who don\'t know what they are talking about and who\'s only aim seem to be to sow seeds of hatred and death instead of making the most of what little we have got and make a go of it - together.

Mi Grandin Ra\'anana, Israel