Let me get this straight. The ‘Chosen People’, (I was born one and it’s hard to shake that special feeling), who wrestled, (and terrorized), the territory that became the state of Israel away from, (among many others), the British, and have crafted unholy, (maybe inappropriate for the ‘Holy Land’), alliances with the US and the French, et al to insure their existence in the face of being surrounded by other countries that merely want them annihilated, should cede captured land to a ragtag gang of unorganized, destitute, and angry homeless people because once they get their own place, peace will naturally follow.

If I’m getting the gist of this, either somebody forgot to lace my Kool-Aid or the basic premise requires an unconditional belief in faeries. Here’s the problem in a nutshell. There are hundreds of religious, tribal and ideological factions in the region, and each one HATES most or all of the others. A Palestinian state is not the answer to the Palestinian problem. It simply provides boundaries, a flag and an unsingable anthem to the staging ground, (as it’s been for several thousand years), for attacking neighboring infidels. The impossibility of a US brokered ‘peace’ in the middle east is rooted in our inability to translate, no less understand, the idiomatic complexity of the word. Add to that the inescapable and undebatable belief in absolute, divine endowment of exclusive right and righteousness, and the prospect of negotiated peace is reduced to…can there be a percentage less than zero? Time spent in search of politicized diplomacy will be added to the centuries of time wasted.

Instead, in the midst of an unprecedented, nearly universal, (thank you FaceBook), wave of desire for freedom and dignity throughout the Arab world, those of us who enjoy and cherish those values should make their goal our goal. We need to stop warring against spectral enemies and put our energies into the positive support of liberating the oppressed, (without demanding all of their oil in return). Everyone will not be our friend, but they will have a much healthier perspective for liking us…and each other. Tyrants and religious zealots will not be swayed, but the innate human desire for hope and purpose will outlive tyranny and disprove dogma.

…and speaking of dogma. Now that Harold Camping has gotten the Rapture prediction wrong yet again, here’s a bit of advice, Hank. If you want your prophecy to come true, just prerecord your doomsday rant and run it every hour on your ridiculous Family Radio…eventually you’ll be vindicated. Or…just shut up!