>>>>>Helen Thomas is probably a little senile but her ability to be an apologist for a thug like Arafat predates any senility.
>>>>>
>>>>>Of course a real argument could be made that in 1945 real justice would have involved giving the Jews all of Germany and let the Europeans figure out what to do with the Germans.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>This is somewhat simillar to the points that your good friend Ahmadinejad is trying to argue. {g}
>>>>Would you expand little bit more on this ? ;)
>>>
>>>Okay, you've exposed me as an Iranian sympathizer and stooge for the mullahs <g>
>>>
>>>Obviously my remark was hyperbolic, but there is some logic to the idea that true justice, in 1945, would have been for Germany to pay for a crime so vast as to be almost unimaginable. ( granted what happened in the final days of the war on the Eastern Front came close to Biblical vengeance but that didn't do the Jews much good )
>>>
>>>Purely on the basis of reparations, not in terms of fulfilling Talmudic promises, the Jews, it could be argued, were entitled to Germany as a homeland. Seldom has a people had more right to justice in the face of state-sponsored atrocity.
>>>
>>>I have a great deal of sympathy for all the people who lived in Palestine prior to 1948 but I have nothing but contempt for all those who could not see the foundation of Israel as more than a zero-sum game.
>>>
>>>A collaboration of the Zionists, the Lebanese and the Arab people living in Palestine could have resulted in a properous and sucessful environment for all to thrive. I guess Lebanon's attempt at confessionalism shows how difficult that would have been, but as the ultimate destruction of Lebanon points out it is manipulation of internal tensions from the outside that is the biggest threat to the melding of people who otherwise might have common interests in cooperation succeeding.
>>>
>>>Popular movements are interesting in that the biggest danger is that they be co-opted by the worst elements of the oppressed group. Never has this been better demonstrated than in the case of the PLO ( or Habash's faction ) with the possible exception of the Provos.
>>>
>>>There should have been a Palestine in the 50s but it was prevented because other "leaders" in the area found the chaos more to their benefit.
>>
>>Hi Charles
>>
>>You don't share the view that the origins of WWII where in the settlement after WW1 and that modern Germany is a testament to the enlightened peace settlement of 1945 then .
>
>Oh, and on the point of modern Germany : probably the most enlightened post-war policy on behalf of any victors (with possible exception of post-war Japan) - especially in that it was done for the most part for less than benevolent or enlightened reasons. Had the USSR not been what it was, we may have seen Versailles II.
>
>There would certainly have been many more gallows at Nuremberg.

The largest countries left standing would always be enemies.Every country needs an enemy, it helps them (us) define ourselves.