Dear Viru It is important to remember that Jews suffered discrimination in Europe and not in the Arab and other Muslim countries, till the British formed Israel which refused to recognise Palestinian rights. Europe was stunned by the "final settlement" of Hitler but the solution they found was typically colonial - a land in the Palestinian territory and justified in the name of the "promised land" of the Bible. Neither is acceptable. Arab and Muslim opposition to Israel began after it and justifiably so. One cannot justify the statement of the Iranian president that Israel should be wiped out. Now that it has existed for 60 years a way has to be found of accommodating it but not as a colonial state existing with the force of arms. The Iranian statement is fundamentalist and we cannot accept it but a middle way has to be found of accommodating all sides. Yasir Arafat said as early as 1974, in his UN speech that the Palestinians were ready to recognise Israel if Israel accepted a Palestinian state in return and withdrew from the territories it occupied in 1967. In fact, he was ready to allow Israel to keep the territories it captured in 1948 against the UN mandate but Israel demands negotiations inch by inch even after the Oslo agreement. So history is not going back 2,000 years in the name of the promised land or blaming one side but putting issues in a proper perspective. Walter |