when the discussion turned on how to handle the Cossaks pogoms, Tevye agreed with both positions saying : "You know, your right." And hearing the second position said: "you know, your right too!"

In your positioning you both ignore the situation that pluralistic societies really don't exist in the area. The unrecognized drive for total homogeneity is so very foreign to our way of thinking we look for other "reasons" or excuses to explain why Shiia would destroy Suni would destroy Kurds and why Arabs would be happy to destroy Persians and all agree they would like to destroy Jews.

Look at Japan as a model for this. All "outsiders" are Gaijin. And this includes ethnic Japanese from Honsu, because they are different. We are so used to our melting pot we lose sight that the US is an experiment in the world and not a case of business as usual. This is part of the American "exceptionalism" that is identified to explain US culture to the rest of the world.

If the ultimate problem is a cultural one, only cultural change can be efective. The difficulty is limited to the means to provide the environment that will allow this to happen. Israel can survive only if they have the security in place to allow them to demonstrate to the rest of the world the success of their state. And then comparative advantage will force their neighbors to adopt and adapt Israeli success structures.

This requires a tincture of time---and prevention of neighbors short-cutting the process based on hate and fear of any thing different in culture, customs, speech, etc. Funny thing is they are all Semetic peoples.

Publius