WHY BOTHER?: I was going to say something about this piece of antisemetic rubbish, courtesy of our friends at The Guardian, but I couldn't hold down my lunch long enough to formulate a coherent response:

Assuming a "plague on both your houses" approach is not just a travesty of the facts. It shuts out all prospect of a solution. If one side is as bad as the other, then any settlement is out of the question since both sides will go on killing each other in any event. A rational assessment of the roles of oppressed and oppressor, on the other hand, tells us not only why people are killing each other, but also how they can be stopped from doing so.

If the reason for the violence is the illegal occupation of Palestinian territory, then the obvious solution is for the Israelis to get out of that territory and disband the settlements. If the Israeli government just won't budge on either withdrawal or the settlements, then the obvious answer is for the west to impose sanctions -- to cut off the massive economic subsidies and arms shipments that have built up the Israeli economy and its military machine.

But if you were expecting a bookend to this "devil's advocate" argument -- a shred of historical balance that might have begun with "On the other hand, if the reason for the violence is that Arafat will accept no solution that doesn't end with the wholesale destruction of the State of Israel..." -- well, there was none. I'm still trying to scrape my jaw back from the floor.

Fortunately, Grasshoppa has rendered anything more that could have been said redundant.