Imagine enemy tanks running up and down your streets. Imagine enemy soldiers smashing their way into your neighbors' house, then dragging off the males and smashing what they can. Then the house across the street, and now your house.

Imagine the enemy soldiers refusing to allow ambulances in to take sick and injured people to hospitals which don't have medicines because the same enemy soldiers won't allow those in, either. The wounded they have shot are left to bleed to death.

Most folks regard protecting their homeland as a supreme duty. And, Palestinians are people - human - with feelings, pride, ambitions and dignity, even though the Israelis are not treating them as such. They also have the courage to fight the Israeli tanks, American made helicopters, American made F-16s, rockets, APS, etc., with AK-47s and suicide bombers. (Save it, all. I believe a person who believes so much in the cause, in the dignity of their people, who do that as being courageous. It was an American patriot who said, "I regret I have but one life to give for my country.")

The choice the Israelis seem to be giving these people is to either fight or give up. Either way they are done, and maybe some mothers would like their children to fight.

Watching the news tonight I don't see how I could ever return to my former affection for Israel. I've read her history, the biographies and autobiographies of all their Prime Ministers, and have always wanted to see it. I saw them through their wars, worried, fretted, and cheered. I stayed with Jewish friends in '67, and we listened to every newscast and watched TV with the intensity of a parent watching a child which might drown and which we couldn't help.

Right now, I don't regard Israel as much better than Germany in the late 1930s. The Germans, too, when resistance fighters killed some people would line up innocent civilians and shoot them in retribution. The Israelis seem to be doing the same thing without the line. The Germans, too, would rampage through villages rousting people and wrecking houses.

And some mothers would rather have their children dies as wolves than sheep.

Arf