Peter Bromberg's UnBlog

The insanity of American foreign policy is on display everywhere in the world. When you go to war against anyone, especially against extreme cultures and nations, you must bomb Dresden into smoking ruins, or you cannot win the war. You must drop The Bomb on Hiroshima, or the price will be a Pyrrhic victory at best. Just as in a personal fight against an armed mugger, you must fight for your life and when your opponent goes down, make sure he stays down, by whatever means are necessary -- or you will simply die. In the struggle against Muslim extremism and against extremist cultures overseas, we have, instead, as Republicans, conservatives, Democrats and liberals, abandoned most of The Constitution and denied most of our own right and freedoms in the name of "security." When you go to war, there are some enemies who must be utterly destroyed. Americans no longer have the stomach to destroy their enemies. They no longer even have the stomach to fight for their own freedom....

Many Americans are confused or simply ignorant about the history of Israel and "Palestine".  The following information is offered to provide some historical context, and is derived from several good sources. A common misperception about Israeli sovereignty  is that all the Jews were forced into the Diaspora by the Romans after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in the year 70 C.E. and then, 1,800 years later, suddenly returned to Palestine demanding their country back. In reality, the Jewish people have maintained ties to their historic homeland for more than 3,700 years. The Jewish people base their claim to the Land of Israel on at least four premises: 1) the Jewish people settled and developed the land; 2) the international community granted political sovereignty in Palestine to the Jewish people; 3) the territory was captured in defensive wars and 4) God promised the land to the patriarch Abraham. Even after the destru...