Thank you Stephen -

I was suggesting that the Arab nations, were they only determined to kill all Jews, would have done so years before the state of Israel was formed. They would have gone to all-out-war while the Zionist movement was still in its infancy. The Arab nations could have used their military to stop the immigration of the Jewish settlers.

And here is where it is imporant to understand that the only usefulness of facts on the ground is if someone else agrees with them. Otherwise it sounds like mythology.

Here's my facts on the ground. From 1939-47 The UK actively blocked legal immigration of Jews into the Levant. That is simply a matter of fact. Any Jews, from anywhere in the world were blocked from entering Israel and could only get in by smuggling themselves. This was executed in response to Arab demands that the area be cleared of all Jews in preparation of a Greater Araby that would stretch from the Atlantic to Central Asia and beyond. The Jews, on their tiny plot of strategic land stood in the way of an unbroken land route from Morocco to Samarkand.

From 1941-45 the Grand Mufti living in Berlin ran a steady pogrom against the Jews in Israel to satisfy Hitler.

However at the time Jews represented a fairly significant relative chunk of the population. According to Joan Peters, probably half or slightly more than half. The root cause of this is two fold. One is, there simply weren't that many people in total living there and the land which became Israel was an empty barren rocky place.

Understand also that under the original division plans there would be Transjordan and there would be Israel. Israel would be what it is today - roughly Israel + the disputed territories and Jordan would be what it is today as well. At the 11th hour the British changed the map and eliminated the WB and Gaza from Israel since they controlled both Egypt and Jordan anyway - no one was going to stop them.

From 1922-39 The UK waffled and generally put in place the Arab regimes that are in place today; the genetic monarchies like the Hashemites and the Saud or at least the army officers who formed the backbone for the coups in the 50's that gave rise to Nasser and others like him. Syria and Lebanon were under French control similarly. The mid east Progroms took place during this time, actually from 1920 on. It's during this time that net Jewish immigration was nearly flat.

From 1919-22 the UK under Balfour promoted promoted a Jewish homeland in response to the unique efforts of a few individuals in the government after the war who felt it would be good for England to have a western facing, largely European grounded country in the mid east to countervane the remnants of the recently defeated Ottoman Empire. The rough outlines were already worked out as they had been between 1907 and 1914 in a series of amazing meetings between a French Jew, Herzl and the German Kaiser.

So my facts on the ground tell me that the Arabs tried and failed to kill off zionism in its infancy. They simply weren't successful at it - for whatever reason: incompetance, pride, disorganization...who knows? They DO seem to be cursed with astonishingly bad tactical, strategic, political and social leadership (like the supreme leader of the Egyptian armies during the 67 war who spent the whole time hiding in his apartment in Cairo and who later either killed himself or was forced to).

But of course the problem is - if the very facts themselves are not believed or agreed to then they cease to be facts. They have fact like attributes but they can't be used or relied on. For example if hang around here long enough or dig you will find allusions to a 'massacre' that Sharon committed in Qibya in 1953. 69 civilians killed when Sharon's group demolished a villiage in retaliation for some particularly brutal murders. OK those are the rough facts. Here is what I understand to be true:

From 1950-53 over 450 Israelis had been murdered in the same kinds of attacks we see today - relative to the population of fewer than 900,000 at the time, the cost was enormous. (about 140,000 Americans relatively speaking in 2002). The pressure to do something was unimaginable.

Arabs hid in the buildings because prior 'scare tactics' had been to demolish small outbuildings.

When the IDF troops discovered that the buildings were occupied they stopped, went in and recued as many people as they could find.

When I watch the news and learn that today with all of our technology almost every US military casualty in Afghanistan has been the result of mistakes, accidents, car crashes and procedural human error I can't accept that Qibya was a massacre.

But the Arabs are free to disagree with that and hold up Qibya as a bloody shroud and evidence of Sharon the Vampire.