First, I would like to thank David Johnson for his summary of an article by Gerry Giesler from the Epoch Times. Epoch Times is excellent.

The Gazette welcomes all points of view, especially those which disagree with my own. No one will ever be "canceled" on this platform.

Hello again Kelly.
You're right about it being "impossible to relate the problems of Israel and Palestine if [you] had 1000 times the space allotted here...". It's a religious knot of Gordian design tied by Muslim believers more than a thousand years ago. Muhammad revealed a religion unlike any other, until Communism was concocted by Marx. Both religions are determined to enslave the world; Islam offers three choices: conversion, submission as dhimmi (slave status), paying the (jizya) tax, or death. Islam is wholly infused with the obligation of Jihad. "All four principal Sunni schools agree on the importance of jihad. Ibn Abi Zayd al-Qayrawani (d. 996), a Maliki jurist declared": "They [kafirs and unbelievers] have the alternative of either converting to Islam or paying the poll tax (jizya), short of which war [death] will be declared against them. Jihad is an elemental part of Islam, and it is especially designed to fight Christians and Jews."

There has never been a shortage of people determined to rule the world, always through the brute force of superior military power. Often the idea driving these wannabe gods is designed by other delusional, self-proclaimed geniuses. Whether Genghis Khan with his Mongol empire (don't know who inspired Genghis), Julius Caesar, the Abbasid Caliphate, Hitler's National Socialist German Workers' Party - (Nazi), the Chinese Yuan Dynasty, or the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR),these folks all suffered from psychopathic god complexes.

But two players remain in our bruised world, Communism and Islamism, - one very young (1917) and another very old (632a.d.) - both betting their future (and everyone else's) that they will soon own us all, like hapless Uighurs or extras from "I, ROBOT."

It's going to be messy, when Mr. Putin, Mr. Xi, and Mr. Rouhani, are embarrassed to discover that they are not gods - that they must also die and be replaced by the next god-trainee manifesting big ideas, parading his troops with clogging precision, flashy new uniforms and the latest weapons. He will boast of his faster-than-light missiles and invisible planes. He will swagger on stage before his chosen, thousand-man congress, like a stiff-jawed Mussolini of old, flexing his power, his hegemony. And his masses will kowtow in return. It's a most ancient scenario.

But I digress.

You have given a short history of Israel and its inspiring accomplishments. But when I think of Israel today standing almost alone against an anti-Semitic world, with America's foreign policy now in the hands of an utterly corrupt "president", scheming with the far-left communist Democratic Party to hurt Israel by supporting her ancient enemies, I think of the Bible, 2Maccabees 7. I think of the woman with seven sons, arrested with her, and forced to eat pork to show respect for the king, Antiochus IV Epiphanes. "When they refused, he tortured and killed the sons one by one in front of the unflinching and stout-hearted mother." Yes, I'm prejudiced here. I have deep respect for Israel, and the same for Benjamin Netanyahu. It is a mistake to attack this "stiff-necked" people.

Yes, the Palestinians have rights which must be respected, once they have removed the army of Hamas terrorists that call the shots. I think war is most bitterly fought when religion is the central issue. Since the year 632 a.d. (Muhammad's death) Islam's sworn intention has been to convert, enslave, or kill, (in particular) people "of the Book", that is Jews and Christians. This is a principal tenet of Islam for 13 centuries, demanded by their sacred books, the Qu'ran and Hadith. There is nothing like this in Judaism.

The (Arab) Palestinians have lived in the area of Palestine for about 100 years. "The Palestinian Jews lived in the land of Palestine since 135 CE when Rome changed the name from Judea to Palestine (it was NOT a country after Israel was defeated and only became a country again when it was returned to the Jewish people. There has NEVER been a country by the name of “Palestine”). Thereby, the term only applied to Jews for 2,000 years. Only the Jews who battled with Rome were expelled from Jerusalem, while many remained. The Romans never expelled the Jews from all of Judea."

Jumping forwards a few thousand years, into this most recent "war" in Israel, even the fetid voices of the radical Leftist media have documented the fact that Hamas initiated the unprovoked missile attack into civilian populated areas of Israel. Israel is responding in self-defense.

Cutting this thing short, (got off track) I can "...condemn only the Palestinians" because in this conflict it was "only the Palestinians" who began the fight with their missile attacks - by the thousands. As rational people, how else should the Israelis have acted? I look to history for an answer.