Allow me to put to you a hypothetical scheme. Say someone knocks on your front door and when you open it he sticks a gun in your face and tells you that he is taking possession of your house. You had better be out by the morning, he says, or I will kill you. Naturally, this shocks and alarms you, but you keep calm enough to ask him how he can believe that he has the right to do this, to which he casually replies that his ancestors lived on this very spot two thousand years ago and he has returned to reclaim what is, by any reasonable standards, his rightful property. Ultimately, he further adds, it is not really a legal matter because God gave him this house for him and his people to live in until the end of time. He then storms off, manifesting every indication of a surly annoyance that he and his property should be treated in such a cavalier manner.

Well, maybe he was just a passing lunatic,you think, and I'll never see him again, but just in case, I'd better report it to the police. So you do. Imagine your horror when they inform you that they know this man well and they have actually arranged for him to take possession of your house. The poor fellow has no house of his own, they say, and so we have given him yours. They then brazenly go on to admit that he has in fact many other houses but for religious and sentimental reasons he really likes this one so they thought it was only fair he should have it. Wait a minute, you say, either this guy is some religious lunatic or he is a thief attempting to rob me of my house, I can think of no third explanation - yet you are supporting him in this villainy. Backing him to the hilt, sir, they assure you, and if you return in an attempt to reclaim the property we will bring overwhelming force to bear on the situation, up to and including killing you.

Staggering out into the sunlight, you think the world has gone mad. And of course you are right. In fact, the world has never been other than mad, it's just that until this happened - that is, until it happened to you - you had never noticed.

I said at the beginning that this is a hypothetical situation and, in the case of your own home, hopefully it is. But it is exactly how, with the enthusiastic assistance of Great Britain, the USA and France, the state of Israel was created. It is furthermore exactly how Israel continues to behave, as its refusal to cease building houses for jews on arab land demonstrates.

During the days of the Cold War, I had always felt a natural disinclination to believe the wilder tales of totalitarian communist rule that came from the soviet bloc, thinking that surely an entire population cannot be micro-controlled to the extent reputed to occur there. Then the wall fell and the virtually unbelievable condition of Ceaucesceau's Romania became known to the world, with none of its people knowing anything other than what their government had told them. The comparitive level of brainwashing in Romania then and Israel now occured to me when I read of an Israeli woman who, when told of the world's disbelieving reaction to her government's version of their latest act of piracy and murder on the Gaza Aid flotilla, exclaiming 'but how could they not believe?' Perhaps she responded in the same way when the world repudiated Israel's denial of the dropping of phosphorous bombs on Gazan schools. But of course mental conditioning is always easier when the people want to believe what you are telling them in the first place.

Now much or all of the above may be a simplified version of history. It does not take into account the unrelentingly aggressive Arab stance towards a jewish state. But certainly since 1967 Israel has been robbing and killing arabs at whatever time and place it has deemed necessary or desirable. Its stance of indignant outrage when the arabs object and retaliate to this is risible, or it would be in less tragic circumatances. (At this stage of the game asking who began the cycle of violence really doesn't help anyone.)Nor can it go on indefinitely. You cannot keep the heel of your boot on someone's throat forever. Unfortunately, since the USA has thoughtfully provided them with a huge arsenal of nuclear bombs, when the day of reckoning comes the crazy bastards might just take the rest of us with them.