try US's exploits in Vietnam. Superpower full of bombs and cash abandons battlefield to barefoot peasants.

Germany's will was not broken in WWII. Attempt on Hitler was a sectarian effort. Germany fought against impossible odds to the end, the very end when there was no longer a physical ability to maintain a front line. No nation in history fought so long and so hard after losing hope for victory. Just because you are on the other side (US' share of German losses is marginal) doesn't mean you must bash the enemy.  


that's right, Red Cross will bring them Israeli fighter jets schedules, maps of airports and shoulder missiles.


precisely, it's much more comfortable to shoot from behind a running kid than to snipe from a building packed with children.

I thought Muhammad Ali was Albanian. In any case it is Westernization that uplifted Russia, Japan, Turkey, etc. For some reason, the Arabs have never quite implemented any comparable program of Westernization.

suicide bombers are gone because the contact of Palestinian and Jewish populations is interrupted by the wall. A bomber won't sneak into Israel from the West Bank. Only the Israeli Arabs can resort to the tactic. Those Jewish communities that stayed on the other side of the wall are heavily guarded. Missiles are the only way for the Pals to get to Israel, insofar as tunnels are inefficient. Next thing might be the swimmers travelling from Gaza to Israel under water. Or the supersonic supermen flying over the wall and descending upon the cities.

that wasn't an answer, dottore. Just remember the penis. Victorious weapon of the Arab revenge. There is no escape, they're cuming.


study Persian history. Or Chinese. Or Jewish.


total war of attrition. As far as the WILL goes, Germany was never broken, and Japan was broken by the nukes.

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it would be dumb to skip statistical studies on the subject. Let's see how many pro-Israel columnists are in the leading US papers, and how many pro-Palestinian. Let see how much time was devoted to Israel's official speakers like Regev, and pro-Israel unofficial ones, on CNN, Fox, ABC, etc. Now, how much time has been given to the Hamas speakers? Europe of course is somewhat different in the press coverage, yet hardly fundamentally.

yep, pretty much defeated. History, though, is pretty much zigzagy, so maybe they will be patient enough to wait until the next turn. The more you remember the defeat the sweeter the vengeance. Given what we know about human history, every people can sit and wait until its time to be on top arrives. WHo knows, maybe genitalia are the Arab weapon of choice, and the penis-shaped missiles of yours are long-outdated in the battle for global supremacy.

came across another phrase about the Arab civilizational inferiority; Robert Kaplan in The Atlantic calling Iran


http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200901u/gaza

There seems to be problem of organization with the Arab societies. Even armed with the best weaponry in the world (as Egypt in 1973), Arab armies are ineffective. They get the stuff to knock out tanks and strike down jets, but in the end they're beaten by infantry (1973, Sinai). Hezbollah seems to be the only hi-q fight force Arabs fielded in centuries (besides Jordan's Arab Legion in 1949, which was in essence a British Legion), and people will quickly point that it is a fruit of Persian discipline.

Regarding Turkey vs Arabs issue, comes in mind the Ottoman Empire of the late, which, being itself an obsolete entity, controlled huge Arab regions without any real challenge. The Arabs did beat the Turks viciously, though, under Muhammad Ali of Egypt. The Ottoman Empire was then saved by Europe.

it's a tough society, like so many others.


Stalin was neither religious nor fat, and killed more folk than all others combined.

aha, very relevant comparison with Palestine. Bring India, Cambodia and Bolivia as well.


don't break into my house and cry when I shoot you up.

so far security machine has always prevailed over the popular mood in Arab countries. Besides Yemen, as i understand, no Arab nation ever had a true revolution, a genuine popular kick into the dictator's ass. In the end, the crowds will be dispersed and the activists will be electroshocked; that will be the end to the Arab protest against Israeli actions. Business as usual.

well, some believe Jews had the right to the land their great-great-great-and-so-forth-grandparents had never seen (and I personally doubt there were that many of them with ANY ancestral trace in Palestine whatsoever).

the point, though, is here: you were born in a filthy crowded hopeless bazar and lived a poor angry hopeless life BECAUSE... your (grand)parents were chased out of their homeland, or fled amidst a war. There is a plot of land, a PARTICULAR well-known plot of land that belonged to your father, and there was a house, a citrus plantation, a herd of sheep...all that WOULD HAVE given you a much, much better life than the one you have actually lived in a refugee camp. Your very existence was taken away from you, and in return you got some alien life in an alien place. The plot of land owned by your father is now owned by a Jew who came from USSR couple years ago...or couple decades. And so you rise and say "Excuse me, I think you have something that belongs to me.."

Right of return is incompatible with a peace deal, but what do you say to those whose train of life was launched onto  very different rails than it was supposed to be?

seems there is no official text of the ceasefire, and maybe there is no text at all. Hard to see what concrete conditions there were. What regards smuggling, that just can't be violation of the deal, for Israel surely never stopped upgrading its own military.

Arab imitation of the West has been a parody. Came down to the imitation of the slogans and the dress code. Turkish Westward efforst have been way more successful. Correct me, but i think Turkish army is two heads above any Arab one. This modern Turkey, which generally can be considered a success, is the result of a decided re-orientation read de-Orientation. COmpare Peter the Great of Russia with Ataturk, u see what i mean. Here's a row of historical u-turns to make a parallel: Russia early 1700s, Japan 1890s, Turkey 1910s-20s. Most zealous, most successful Oxidentations. Literally within years old hopelessly obsolete armies produce sensations. Arabs have not repeated that.

yea, it's Iran who's under occupation, it's Iranians who fled their homes and now live in poverty, a dozen folks on square inch.

maybe the Arabs, in order to compete with Israel, should try imitating it? To compete with the West, -  imitate it? So far the Arabs have succeeded in imitating only the Western business dress code. Btw, doesn't the all-too-obvious fact of the constant Muslim defeats at the hands of the West (incl. Israel) undermine the faith in infallibility of the Koran?