Israel can be so ridiculous.

So, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu finally accepts the idea for a sovereign Palestinian state (never mind that's basically what Palestinians did have prior to begin shoved out of it by a mandate from the UN after World War II), but then he attaches two preposterous conditions:

http://tinyurl.com/kkc5pw

1. How "sovereign" would it be if it had to remain unarmed, for crying out loud? So Israel is allowed to have a powerful military and even nukes but their neighbors aren't allowed ANY defenses? Come on, that's no kind of offer.

2. Insisting they recognize Israel as a state is fine, as it would then be reciprocal, but no - they must recognize Israel as "THE Israeli state" and control of Jerusalem in particular "must" be forever controlled by Israel. Palestinians, even through a legal immigration program or something, could never have their homes back from before the world war. Again, a ridiculous demand that would be treating a Palestinian state differently from other sovereign states.

I've got a lot of issues with Israel and the US support for that regime that have nothing to do with any dislike of Jews or Muslims or anything irrational like that. A couple of my issues are these:

Palestine, or Canaan as it was once called, was not even the original home of the Judaic (Israelite) tribes historically - they had to conquer the Chaldeans and many others occupying that land before they could establish control of the area and have a fairly short-lived period of independence and the monarchies of the Old Testament (if those accounts are even factual, and for the sake of argument let's just accept they are). Then they were conquered by the Babylonians. In fact, the area has been conquered by one empire after another, and for anyone to claim the land "belongs" to them makes no sense. Land doesn't belong to anyone, unless you're religious, and bigoted about it on top of that. For Israel to claim in a secular, rational world that the land is theirs by right is ludicrous. Of course, most believe that it is theirs for religious reasons - because they are God's chosen people. What kind of an argument is that if you don't subscribe to the Jewish faith?

Others who are ethnically Jewish but secular in their beliefs will point to the UN resolution which gave them "back" the Holy Land after the Holocaust in a gesture that was well-intentioned, but in my view horribly misguided and unfair to the Palestinian people who were then living there and who were forced out of their homes and neighborhoods and into ghettos or into exile, the same way Jews themselves have been treated by many countries throughout history. They should know that oppression by conquering and subjugating is humiliating and dehumanizing. They should know it better than anyone else! Yet when given the chance they show they are no better than the many nations and empires which subjugated the people of their race and religion in the past.

I'm not anti-semitic or anti-anyone as a group. I shouldn't even have to say that, but as a white non-Jewish male, it seems I must preface any political remarks against any group of Jews or Blacks or Women or other collection of people I don't 'belong' to (simply by accident of birth and for no other reason) in this politically correct world or be accused of prejudice. But I'm not prejudiced at all, not against individuals. I can only rationally judge people as individuals, period. I'm not a nationalist either and any state making claims about its "rights" as though there WERE some divine referee, whether it's Israel, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, or the United States' "Manifest Destiny" which was a nonsensical, Calvinistic attempt to justify forcibly taking Spanish and Mexican land, which had previously been stolen from the Native American states, which in turn had been stolen from roving bands of woolly mammoths and sabre-toothed cats... well, you see where I'm going with this. I don't believe anyone "owns" any part of the Earth.

It comes down to natural selection of course, though when it comes to human societies no one wants to say it. "Might makes right" in the natural world, and it does in the human world too, whether we like it or not. The only difference is that no other species pleads "God's will" when they beat the hell out of a less powerful group. They just do it. There's something more honest about a lion just attacking and eating a gazelle because it's hungry than watching the US invade Iraq or Israel bomb the shit out of Palestinian towns or Russia invade Chechnya or Georgia and then all of the above conquerors claiming some kind of "right" or moral high ground on the world stage to justify their actions.

Cut the crap. Just admit you're bullying a weaker opponent for your own self-interests and at least own your actions for what they really are. You may not be liked any better by anyone, but at least you're being honest about your motivations. Far too many actions are carried out by humans who cite one agenda while in truth embracing another. Deception: Just one more undesirable trait Homo sapiens has evolved.