One of the ways that win-win contracts are constructed, are by self-definition of what winning is.

It does NOT equate to conquering, or dominance.

Hopefully, backbone results from thorough and benevolent analysis first, and not from arbitrariness.

Arbitrariness is something other than backbone.

Hezbollah would probably eat them for lunch absent Israeli access to American weapons.

Hezbollah is a militia. It can't even aim missiles. It can ONLY shoot randomly.

The only thing that it is good at is guerilla fighting.

If they stayed in Lebanon consistently, then Israel would stay in Israel.

Forty some years ago I was completely for Israel. Having been witness to history since then…The USS Liberty…watching those who were hating on American servicemen line up to give blood for the Israeli Army…Arab oil embargo…Pollard…AIPAC…Derschowitz's contempt for pre 1900 America…I no longer drink the Jewish Kool Aid.

By the way, the West Bank is not part of Israel so maybe the IDF should try staying in Israel before they complain about Hezbollah "kidnapping"(!!!) their soldiers from outside of Israel. Silly me thinking that "kidnapping" was something done to kids, whereas soldiers, especially big brave macho bullying IDF types get captured.

We've all had emotional events in our lives that shook our assumptions.

I personally witnessed a police riot during an anti-war demonstration in 1970, that soured my view of police for two decades.

I have a different view of police in general now, though individual cases certainly turn my stomach.

In journalism, I was able to attend a small press conference at the Nicaraguan embassy in DC in 1980, shortly after the Nicaraguan revolution overthrowing US client Somoza. At the press conference was Daniel Ortega's brother (a Marxist Leninist) and also representatives from liberation theology Catholic priests.

I read the Washington Post's assessment of the press conference and political "context" the following day. I was appalled that they focused ONLY on the remarks by Ortega's brother as an indication of the association with Moscow and Cuba. They neglected the visionary poets and priests.

But, a year later, the priest and the poet that presented at the press conference had been imprisoned, and one executed, and the Marxist-Leninists had purged any liberation theologists that objected to their policies.

Research in context bears out truth.

Research with an emotional bias, bears out prejudice.

You may call my attitude that Israel has a right to exist without random violence on its civilians as a prejudice.

I don't. Thats what I call humane.

Us liberals simultaneously assert the rights and goals of multiple parties, see clearly.

That's something that is completely alien to Israeli loyalists posturing themselves as liberals. Isn't it odd that you don't extend your liberal concerns as to what is humane to Palestinean apartment dwellers randomly killed when Israeli gunships rocket their apartment building. Obviously your humanitarianism extends no further than the ends of your own tribe.

What you really are Mr Witty is a phony American and a phony liberal. You're a Zionist. I hope you make Aliyah soon. And this concludes my side of our dialogue forever.

Simultaneously with the right and goals of post-1948 Israel to exist (with no borders, no constitution?) without random violence on its civilians, what are the rights and goals of Palestinians, and especially so in the matchup between stones and tanks and bulldozers (paid for my Americans)? I am not
unsympathetic to either party. I am just trying to see the big
picture, especially since I pay taxes, have been an American combat soldier, and I have many relatives in combat in the Middle East.

The Jews were so important economically in Commonwealth that merchants considered it advisable to appear harmless, and it is not surprising that typically Eastern European Jewish characteristics like kvetshing are associated in the Polish mind with femininity

What you are up against is not his self-styled "liberal, humane Zionism" but pure zealotry. Mr. Witty's brand of Zionism is a secular religion, fundamentalist in nature: it is immune to logic or facts.

Or morality, for that matter.