I read your posts with eager anticipation, always expecting a well reasoned, thoughtful message, and am never disappointed. Sometimes they are funnier than hell, a rare quality on this board, and even the sarcasm has a gentle quality, one I admire. This is too long, and the final paragraph summarizes my thoughts.

And, on the matter of Israel, we are at opposite poles. While there are some differences between what the Israelis and Palestinians are doing, even the differences are illustrative and not flattering for the Israelis. Not flattering for the Palestinians, either, but they reveal a fight for ideals rather than a cold, calculated slaughter.

For instance, regarding using young women as suicide bombers. While that is happening, the Israeli military is brutalizing Palestinians. And many, many more Palestinians are dying than Israelis, including many civilians if reports from the neutral observers who are able to get a glimpse inside territory occupied by the Israeli Army.

Now, I see ambulances in the newsclips arriving at the scene of the suicide bombings. I hear reports that the Israeli Army will not allow ambulances into the areas they have brutalized.

So, is it different for an armed soldier under orders from his war criminal commander-in-chief to slaughter civilians than for an adolescent girl to do the same? (Powell, and his boss, are as hypocritical as anyone can be to meet with Sharon and cancel a meeting with Arafat because of a suicide bomb while Israel is slaughtering civilians.)

The only differences are in scale and delivery systems. The Israelis are more efficient, killing more Palestinians with an army under the central authority of a war criminal. The Palestinian use of these girls is sad and sickening. It is impossible to excuse. And because it is so reprehensible one has to wonder how it could happen. A mortar wouldn't take much thought, a young woman as a suicide bomber indicates a different mind-set.

Obviously these women could refuse to do it. But say they couldn't. They could cross the border and give up. They seem to go alone, and then "pull the trigger". Obviously they are motivated.

What could motivate that? Abject hopelessness is all I can think of. The Israelis have oppressed those people that kids are willing to be suicide bombers. Do you know what that means? Can you imagine the despair which would drive people to that?

Do you believe their parents would condone it if they thought there was a chance for a life with dignity? Nope. People are people, and this couldn't happen as long as they had hope.

Don't give me the BS about brainwashing - the Israeli soldier shooting civilians is just as brainwashed. Brainwashing is in the eye of the beholder, and we're all brainwashed. How could any bright, sensitive, thoughtful person watch an army attack unarmed civilians and not be as sickened as they are hearing about the suicide bombers?

Israel was created as the result of terrorism. People try to say that because it was the British, or because there weren't suicide bombers it was different. It was different - the Jews weren't as hopeless, weren't as despairing, weren't as motivated, and had more than their bodies to use as bombs. Otherwise, identical.

As I've said before, brutality by Israel is as intolerable as brutality by Israel, oppression of Jews is as offensive as oppression by Jews, and it's tragic Israel hasn't learned anything from her experience except how to repeat it on others.

And, Israel has elected a war criminal for a head of state, and turned him loose with an army upon a largely unarmed population because that population wanted to live with dignity, on the land which Israel agreed was theirs.

If Arafat were rampaging through Israel with an army, how would an unarmed (AK-47s aren't "arms" against tanks and rockets) Israeli population?

I had dinner last night with some folks who have been ardent supporters of Israel, as have I. These are well-educated people, generally conservative, always thoughtful, who have little connection with Muslims or Middle Easterners. Most of them have visited Israel, loved the country.

When the network news came on everyone crowded around the TV set. Every single one of them condemned Israel, with no qualifications. This was Middle America, these are people who contribute to political campaigns, and most of them, sadly, are Republican.

Two weeks ago there wouldn't have been a kind word for the Palestinians, even though the encroachment of Israel would have been acknowledged.

I'm sorry. If the existence of Israel were an issue I'd have to rethink. Israel is not going away, unless it demonstrates itself to be such a cruel and heartless nation it does not deserve support. Sharon seems hell-bent on doing just that.

America will not support the elimination of Israel. I hope they won't support the slaughter of Palestinians, either. And one has to be blind to equate an Army slaughtering civilians with a suicide bomber protesting oppression.

Arf