I am going to assault you and try to take your home away. If I am killed or imprisoned, my relatives and friends will continue. The only peaceful thing for you to do is to just give me your home. And even if you do, I will still want you dead, as I have sworn to kill you and all of your descendants.

A bit of a ridiculous example on the surface, but not that ridiculous.

And no, Hezbollah launched rockets from immediatel next to the UN post, as I understand it, in an attempt to bait Israel. Apparently it worked. Please understand this is what I had heard reported....I have no verification of it.

Um, you miss the Islamist goal, scaeagles. It's not to kill all jews throughout the earth wherever they may run to. It's to hold all "waqfs," all lands ever forceable conquered by muslims.

That includes Spain, but jews will still be safe in Brooklyn.



And if you built that house, Leo, in Anaheim near Harbor and Ball .... don't complain about the noisy fireworks. Get my drift?

The problem is, is land worth killing and being killed for? When faced with someone who say "yes, undoubtedly" at what point do you just walk away? Especially when, to start your renewed claim on the land you first took it away from them.

I think you are missing what members of Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad and Hamas have akll sworn to do - not only eradicate Israel, but to kill Jews. I, for one, do not think it stops if Islamofascists get the land they want, as was clearly evidenced by the Clinton brokering a deal where Israel would give up 97% of disputed lands. Arafat rejected it because he had to. Because those Islamic terrorists aren't interested in land. They are interested in killing Jews and the land gives them a reason to do it.

Or, put another way. Go back 60 years and say to the founders of the new Israel:

"You can have your promised land back but it will mean at least 75 years of near continuous bloodshed. Outright war every decade or so and near continuous guerilla warfare. Thousands of Israelites will be killed. Tens of thousands of Arabs. And at the end of that you'll be distrusted by much of the rest of the world and viewed as the aggressor and not the defender."

What kind of reasonable people would say "yeah, let's go for it"?

Then why is it they weren't killing Jews until the Jews laid claim to the land?

I don't disagree with the point you are making at all.

Wasn't that how WWII started, though (in part)? Germany only wanted the Sudetenland. Appeasement emboldened them. It is known that if Saddam had not been expelled from Kuwait he was going to Saudi Arabia next.

Raical Islamic terrorists are no about land. They are about killing Jews and focing everyone to convert to Islam. Giving in emboldens them.

But it is hard to know that since radical Islamism in its modern form has only existed in resistence to Jewish and Western encroachment into Muslim territories.

It is one thing to say that the core would continue fighting but would they still have the broad support necessary from the more mainstream people?

I'd have to research it a bit, but if I recall there were factions of radical Islam that came out of WWII that had always wanted the eradication of the Jews and used the creation of Israel as a rallying cry to unite Muslims to support their goal.

I'm admittedly a bit fuzzy on it.

Perhaps, but when it comes to Israel, we're talking about a situation where they've got at least a seed of a legitimate gripe. The former residents of the land agreed to sell some land to some Jews. They blink, and they Jews are declaring themselves an independent state. They complain (in the form of declaring war), and get spanked...and because their citizens decided to not stick around and get shelled in their homes, the international community decided to make the decission for them that they obviously didn't care about that land, and seized for Israel.

The existance of Israel in its current state is on shaky ethical grounds, so there's not good way to confront "the enemy" on that front without it turning into a tangled mess.

Yes, giving up Israel will not stop their designs on the rest of the world. But notice that we stopped Sadaam pretty easily and decisively when he blatantly stepped over the line with Kuwait. Should Islamists continue their designs at domination, and start attacking in areas where they do not have even the murky justification they have for attacking Israel, I don't think you'll find the world response quite so restrained.