Problem is that Jews are matrilineal and Arabs are patrilineal. Which means that instead of fighting over the land they can now fight over the kids.

Guess not such a good idea after all.

The other reason people visit the camps is as a political statement; it’s important to remember in the face of holocaust denial.

I was born in the 1970s and I have no intention to ever visit the camps. Not because I’m afraid I won’t feel anything. But because I will and I don’t need. to. Nor do I have a duty to. so if I went, and I didn’t feel anything, I wouldn’t feel guilty about it either. I don’t need to tie my emotions to a trip. Take my grandmother’s grave for example- the first time I visit I cried. But I don’t anymore. so what?
Neither side of my family lived through the holocaust. But I as part the Jewish people, experience the national trauma as my own. I don’t recall when I ever learned of it for the first time. I can’t remember a time I ever didn’t know. I’ve had nightmares about Nazis. I feel an initial shudder of fear upon when hearing German spoken and it takes me a few moments to readjust myself.
But I grew up practicing living and breating Judaism; I re-experience the joy of the exodus from Egypt yearly every Passover. I mourn over the sacking of Jeruslaem 4 times a year during national fasts. I remember the assassination of the last governor of Judah almost as I remember the assassination of Yitzchak Rabin. And I rest every seventh day. I’ve been lapsing lately but your post inspires me continue.

Visiting the camps will of course fall flat, overinvested as it is as the consummation of Jewish identification.

Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler was part of a grand strategy of letting Germany expands eastwards to allow Hitler to destroy the Soviet Union.

See below link for more details:

Suppression of real agenda of British appeasement policy of Hitler in western history
http://www.revleft.com/vb/suppression-real-agenda-t113771/index.html

I agree that India should pull back, not because it owes it to Pakistan, but because it owes it to itself. I believe India has the most to lose if Pakistan is totally destabilized simply because it is the closest target for whatever regime replaces the current democratic government there.

However, I don’t believe any amount of exhortation from the Obama administration or any other government will induce India to pull back or reduce the number of troops on its borders.
There’s simply too much distrust, which cannot be overcome just because of soaring rhetoric from the head of the free world asking us all to trust each other.

Pakistan’s military and even civilian leadership genuinely believe that they are going to be able to break the Taliban’s back without uprooting entire divisions of the Army in Punjab. But this perception is an illusion, and a fairly contagious one because it ruffles the fewest feathers and tells people what they want to hear. I want India to make it easy for Pakistan to move those troops not because India owes it to Pakistan, but because it will prevent Pakistan from repeating Musharraf’s feigned assault on the Taliban. When Pindi claims to have defeated the Pakistani Taliban in about 6 months, the victorious Army will withdraw, pretend to prop up the Awami National Party and Frontier Corps, and ask Washington to pay the bill. In the meantime, the Pakistani Taliban will do exactly what the Afghan Taliban did around 2004: wait for the bombs to stop falling, and regroup. If India can create a situation where Pakistan isn’t compelled to delude itself into thinking it can win this war with artillery, then India should create that situation. Not because Pakistan is ‘reliable’ or because Indians are over-defensive, but simply because Pakistan is coming undone, and India is in a position to prevent it. The only question is, how to convince Delhi.

Also, how could the Obama administration ask the Indian government to stand down, when it has been proved time and again that Pakistan HAS been infiltrating terrorists to India through their common border and has always shown itself as an unreliable neighbor?

Acquiring rockets is preparation for attack, not preparation for defense.

By what arithmetic do you compute that 6 people is too many to dig a tunnel? And how could anybody know it wasn’t already under the wall?

I don’t know what the plan is for Gaza, either. The action in the north end of Gaza suggests the target is the Hamas leadership, and not just rocket smuggling. If it should turn out that the plan was just to “Do something” in there then the Kadima government will be shown to be a bunch of idiots.

If it’s the Hamas leadership they’re targeting I think it must also be because Hamas is the primary obstacle to the 2-state solution, and Kadima is committed to the 2-state solution, along with most of the world. This would mean they need a plan for succession. But if they have a succession plan, they may have a good reason for not telling the world.

I don’t think we know what is going on. Nor do I think the Fat Lady is ready to sing.

really, i enjoy your stuff