This dialog is valuable, if only because it helps you learn punctuation and improve your vocabulary.

I cannot understand why you people feel it necessary to insult. That hardly does anything to enhance your arguments. To enclose so many words in quotation marks also is not a sign of mastering the rules of punctuation.

In any event, while I reject the nonsense you write about occupation and forcing such things, I think you must not be paying attention to what you write or to what I wrote. That their children come home alive from school – sure! It is the Gazan terror groups who target Israeli civilians on their way home fro school, as you surely know.

The position of Israeli Arabs is far better than that of Arabs in ANY of the neighboring states. Not only in the jurisdiction of the PA. In fact, it is Lebanon that keeps these Arab refugees in camps, which I hope you do not think is a great humanitarian gesture.

Even when they are in jail they are permitted to earn university degrees.

You may have heard of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli in Hamas captivity. He is not permitted to earn a university degree by his terrorist captors.

He has not even been permitted a single visit by the Red Cross, in violation of all international laws.

The reason why Arabs in “Israel” have a “far better life” than their “brothers in neighbouring areas, such as the Palestinian Authority (sic. formulation noted!)” is because there has been an OCCUPATION forced upon those “neighbouring areas” by the generosity of the state of “Israel”.

Far from aspiring for vibrancy in economic life, they only pray and hope for simple things like:

- Israel shouldn’t bomb them out of the blue and level entire cities on the pretext of chasing terrorists.
- That the myriad checkpoints which litter the West Bank and prevent them from even visiting relatives be removed.
- That their children come back alive from school.
-

Their salaries are higher, their educational opportunities are greater, their personal freedom is more extensive, their medical care is on a much higher level.

You may recall the billions of dollars supplied to the Palestinian Authority, which could have used this money to improve the lot of their people. To build first-class hospitals, for example. To create employment opportunities. But instead they used the money to build villas for the PA chiefs and to stash away in Swiss bank accounts.

Any racism that exists, exists only in the minds of the Israel bashers.

Even the Arabs in Israeli jails — both Israeli citizens and foreign terrorists — enjoy free education, including studying in and getting degrees from the Open University.

It is no surprise that when they are able to express themselves freely, many Palestinians declare that they would prefer to remain as at present and not to live under a Palestinian regime.

“No,” says I, “I don’t. And I don’t care to, nuther. I’ve lived till now and done without it, and had my health, too. But as soon as you tell me, I’ll know, and that’s soon enough. I don’t see any use in finding out things and clogging up my head with them when I mayn’t ever have any occasion to use ‘em. There was Lance Williams, he learned how to talk Choctaw here till one come and dug his grave for him. Now, then, what’s a crusade? But I can tell you one thing before you begin; if it’s a patent-right, there’s no money in it. Bill Thompson he –”

“Patent-right!” says he. “I never see such an idiot. Why, a crusade is a kind of war.”

I thought he must be losing his mind. But no, he was in real earnest, and went right on, perfectly ca’m.

“A crusade is a war to recover the Holy Land from the paynim.”

“Which Holy Land?”

“Why, the Holy Land — there ain’t but one.”

“What do we want of it?”

“Why, can’t you understand? It’s in the hands of the paynim, and it’s our duty to take it away from them.”

“How did we come to let them git hold of it?”

“We didn’t come to let them git hold of it. They always had it.”

“Why, Tom, then it must belong to them, don’t it?”

“Why of course it does. Who said it didn’t?”

I studied over it, but couldn’t seem to git at the right of it, no way. I says:

“It’s too many for me, Tom Sawyer. If I had a farm and it was mine, and another person wanted it, would it be right for him to –”

“Oh, shucks! you don’t know enough to come in when it rains, Huck Finn. It ain’t a farm, it’s entirely different. You see, it’s like this. They own the land, just the mere land, and that’s all they DO own; but it was our folks, our Jews and Christians, that made it holy, and so they haven’t any business to be there defiling it. It’s a shame, and we ought not to stand it a minute. We ought to march against them and take it away from them.”

“Why, it does seem to me it’s the most mixed-up thing I ever see! Now, if I had a farm and another person –”

“Don’t I tell you it hasn’t got anything to do with farming? Farming is business, just common low-down business: that’s all it is, it’s all you can say for it; but this is higher, this is religious, and totally different.”

“Religious to go and take the land away from people that owns it?”

“Certainly; it’s always been considered so.”

Jesus was Polish.

His Parents Wladislaw and Janowska Jakubowitz emigrated from Lublin in 1897, and relocated to Des Plaines Illinois, where Wladislaw found work in a shoe repair shop.

Des Plaines is the home of the first McDonald’s opened by Ray Kroc, which is preserved as a “museum” on Lee Street, north of downtown.

Whew…nice speech! Happy new year to you too!

Well Mulga’s right about one thing anyway.

I’m a computer program from an inexhaustible sewer. No he’s not imagining it.

Meanwhile, and being as you all did SO well on the Blood or Ink test, let’s try multiple choice, and see who figures this one out.

Jesus was

1) Polish
2) Fijian
3) Icelandic
4) Thai
5) Jewish
6) Inuit
7) Croation
8) All of the above
9) none of the above