(In case you guys are wondering, I'm taking a break this evening. Back to the grind early -- TOO early[g] -- tomorrow morning.)

Our talk station, prior to this week, had been doing a good bit of coverage on Israel and the peace process over there. The press at large has been filled with complaints about Israel hitting terrorists as hard as they do, but one after another guest on our station tried (*desperately*, they felt) to get the real story out:

They WANTED peace. They had made every reasonable concession that they could to the Palestinians. But it had become obvious that Yasser Arafat And Co. were saying one thing and then having their followers do the exact opposite to deliberately trash the peace process ...

... all the while, of course, painting Israel as the Enemy.

It was working, too. Tuesday may have changed that. We'll see. If so, it would only be fair.

The REAL irony, to me, is that many of the same people here in the United States who have been criticizing Israel are now calling on US to do the SAME THING THAT ISRAEL has historically done with terrorists: blow 'em up.

Anyone who's interested should read the history of modern Israel, starting with the British Occupation, the Balfour Declaration, and the fact that on the very day that Israel achieved nationhood -- on that very day! -- every single Muslim nation in the region attacked them, from three different directions, with the expressed intention of "driving them into the [Mediterranean] sea."

What we don't understand here in the US (*because* we don't know our history) is that the radical Palestinian elements don't just want some territory. They STILL feel that way: they want Israel GONE, period, and they will not rest until every Jew has been driven from Palestine or killed.

If you want to argue with anything that I've said, I want you to think about the mentality of people who would *CHEER* at the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Americans.

-- Anonymous, September 12, 2001

Answers

Video of Arab cheering so common on TV after a bombing in Israel was absent here on tuesday except for Spanish speaking channels.

-- Anonymous, September 13, 2001

I had noticed the buildup of propaganda against Israel and our modern media's lazy cut and paste of the biased news they were being fed by the radical Palestinian's. It is so common today to take a story off the associated press or other media feed and repeat it without checking into the truth in it.

By the way, we supplied the Palestinian's with weapons and the intelligence to fight the Russians. The former head of the CIA was talking about the people against us that he once worked with. Two months ago 60 minutes II had an interview with a Palestinian who was telling them that it would be easy to attack the White House. The interviewer was aghast with disbelief asking how it could be done. The Palestinian said it just could because we left it vulnerable. He came right out and told them/us what could be done, I almost think he was trying to warn us. Unfortunately the modern American ego did not allow anyone to believe we were that easy to target.

One thing that gets me is so many media going on about how could they fly those planes. Hell it is easy to fly them compared to 20-30 years ago, they almost fly themselves. Nothing that was done was something I and many others have the capability to do. Flight routes can be bought on ebay, the surprise factor alone was enough to shock 3 of the 4 planes full of passengers into inaction, they were too used to being told what to do and tend not to take the kind of initiative to put their own lives in danger in order to try to stop the hijackers, where the fourth plane had people who seemed willing to give their lives in order to save many others. That is the kind of heroism I saw about W.W.II and VietNam. We don't seem to grow these kinds of people any more, after two generations of self serving, instant gratification brainwashing by the corporate consumer moguls, people don't know how to put other lives before their own. That is one major thing you discover in the military "Esperit De Corps". They can't teach it to you, it comes out of your own person, from within. Unfortunately kids have been fed a menu full of shows that hype up the negative things in society-like Seinfield, which was based on selfish irrelevant behavior. Unfortunately kids/people learned to act like that as if it were a good thing. TV shows with women who belittle their husbands, children, even young children that have absolutely no respect for their parents, adults being shown as morons,- family values, love, caring, respect being derided as a weakness.

Maybe now, corporate America will stop putting the almighty dollar ahead of a decent society. Music that is sickening in its sexual explicitness, every third word a word that would have gotten my mouth washed out with soap. This music that is packaged and sold to our children because it is profitable. The same excess the Muslims accuse us of propagating (and unfortunately it is true). I am tired of the lack of basic decency publicly displayed in the major media, movies, TV, music, today.

I grew up in fear of bombs falling and planes crashing-stories from W.W.II. Then experiencing the horror of VietNam and the lasting effect on my generation of men. What happened yesterday has made me go numb, in defense of the fear I know it holds over me, which I am afraid will overwhelm me. Watching a firefighter cry tonight hit me hard, the depth of his grief. I was disgusted to watch the media circus and exploitation of grieving people who brought pictures and descriptions of wives, husbands, parents and adult children who are missing. To use these poor grief stricken souls for their media circus horrified me. Is there no depth of human decency they will not violate in their drive to increase their ratings? I can only think of how I would feel if someone tried to interview me after the death (or possible death) of a loved one. It is difficult enough to go through without having such a personal emotional event plastered all over the world for anyone to see. And to think, the perpetrators are probably cheering each time they see the grief they have caused. I don't think we should be giving them what they want to see. Admission of their power to control us, to make us feel fear, to cause such horrific grief. I think it would be better to show them our anger, restrained and reasoned out with facts and proof.

I think we need to use our brains and not let our emotions control our actions right now, and am glad that is what we appear to be doing. To act out in anger without thought would be lowering ourselves down to their level.

-- Anonymous, September 13, 2001

Well written Cherri. You are much more effective when you compose on WORD and then spell-check and grammar-check.

-- Anonymous, September 13, 2001

This event did not happen on a wim, think about that.

I disagree, we need to hit hard IMMEDIATELY. The problem with America is we have a society of pussys, buttkissers and apologists running around redefining everything into neat little PoliticallyCorrect boxes.

The world knows who and where terrorists operate. Have so for DECADES! If it makes sense now, why didn't it make sense last week to wage a protracted worldwide war on Terrorism by who ever and where ever it exists?

-- Anonymous, September 13, 2001