> the territory was under British control, then was given over to the UN. It doesn't really matter who had control of it. Ireland wasn't any less of the Irish

> the territory was under British control, then was given over to the UN. It doesn't really matter who had control of it. Ireland wasn't any less of the Irish people when it was controlled by England, or Poland less Polish when it was controlled by the Nazis. The Palestinians lived there, therefore it was their land. > the pretty clear reasoning that if the Arab countries had won the war, most likely Israel would have been largely exterminated You don't "exterminate" a country, you exterminate people. And I don't think the idea of the war was to exterminate the Jews, but to get back the country to their legitimate owners. > Do you consider Germany to be an immoral country today because of what they did during WW2? No. I consider Israel immoral today because of what it is doing today. Germany did unspeakable things, but it suffered all the consequences, and has paid to the last cent, and there is practically no relationship between what the country is today and what it was 70 years ago. > What bothers me is the (seeming) double standard, where people consider Israel to be so much worse, for doing so much less than almost any other country. I find it almost sweet that Jews seek their normalcy by trying to catch up on all the horrid stuff that other countries did before we could call them civilised by the modern standards. Jokes apart, what bothers me as a European observer is not only, and maybe not mainly, the substance of what Israel is doing. In your comment you mention Syria- and there are a lot of conflicts, ethnic cleansing and genocides going on in the world. What really bothers me is both the fact that Israel is a western country, and the level of support it gets from other western countries. There's a lot of people that get caught red-handed stealing, big deal; it's a completely different thing if it's a family member that gets caught, and then keeps insisting, beyond any plausibility, that he wasn't in fact stealing, that the purse was disputed. Pure chutzpah. I hope this expresses well my feelings. > the blockage isn't Israel's alone. It's also Egypt's. I'm not sure about this, but I believe that Egypt does it to appease Israel- what other reasons would it have for the blockade otherwise? > Many Israelis don't support the settlements, but the right has been in power here for a long time. The settlements are the occupation of somebody else's land to settle your own civilian population in it. This is not just any political disagreement. It's utterly unacceptable. You should storm the parliament and the government until every single Israeli has been relocated inside the borders. How many people living in a settlement you know? How easy is to choose to do it because it's probably cheaper than renting of buying in Israel? > it's pretty hard to do with a population of people who appear to be pretty hell-bent on killing us We were talking about de-humanising the enemy in order to better kill it. There it is. Palestinians are not hell-bent on killing you, they're rightly enraged for what you're doing to them. Stop doing it now, be cooperative, and their rage will fade. But of course it's much better to proclaim, as Israel does, that you'll be taking and taking until the Palestinians will stop hating you. Which is of course, never.