I wouldn't go to an, although a talented movie director, a child molester nevertheless for any sort of meaningful or valid perspective on anything if it's not about film making.

Woody Allen (and a lot of people) should read Harvey Pekar's "Not The Israel My Parents Promised". A very well written precis of the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict going back to Biblical times, spelling out how Jewish culture and faith changed according to specific events and how that lead to further zealotry in a lot of cases.

There's no room for 'nice' in this conversation. It's sweet and all, but... no.

@2
Management for the The Stranger is desperate to masturbate over anything related to the Middle East. Let 'em have their fun.

That's not how it happened though. It started with British betryal of promises made to both pan-Arab nationalists and Zionists. The Arabs, let by Feisal of Hijaz (the sheikdom then in control of the kingdom that included Mecca and Medina), thought they had negotiated Arab self-determination in the wake of the Ottoman collapse. The Brits had also promised territory to France and some to British zionists. The protectorate tried to juggle all of this until Israeli terrorists eventually undermined the protectorate. It's very imperialist of Mr Allen to transfer European guilt onto the backs of arabs. One might even say (accurately) that it's anti-semitic.

The best news I've heard is that Egypt is now stepping in and brokering peace.

This is as it should be.

A United States of Arabia (not of America) should be the union of nations that provides stability.

I, for one, don't give a shit about the Arabs and Israelis. All this arguing and fighting is pointless. And it won't ever stop, either.

Woody Allen should stick to movie-making. He's got history garbled up (though he does nail the Arabs not acting very "nice") and just confuses people.

"Now children, are we sitting comfortably? Uncle Woody's going to tell you a bedtime story. You see, once upon a time, there were these poor people who asked ever so nicely for an itsy-bitsy-teensy bit of land in the desert -- just a narrow strip of land, really. And you know what happened? The people who were already there said no. Now that wasn't very nice of them, was it?"

@7 Egypt already tried to 'step in' and broker a deal, but because of the coup that happened in Egypt, Al-Sisi (a member of the military) is the current ruler, and he considers Hamas to be an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, and thus a terrorist organization. Any influence Egypt had on Palestine has long since evaporated, so don't hold your breath on Egypt succeeding where everyone else has failed.

#11

I'm not concerned about their success or failure, but I believe the US should no longer make direct efforts to intercede.

That should come from a United States of Arabia.

My hope is that at some point, moderation overcomes them all, and Israeli ends up being a small state in a large union, like Rhode Island.

@3 I just finished reading that book and it was super eye opening. Really glad I got it and hope many others will read it.

Woody's quasi-historical claims do not support new crimes to wash away the old, and he does not seem to support the cycle of violence, so I think that criticism is unfair. The problem I see in his remarks is its childish, schoolyard logic of, 'They started it.' This, despite his acknowledging (explicitly) there is plenty of blame to spread around, and (implicitly) little to be gained from doing so.

Oh good, I was wondering what Woody Allen thought about anything.

As to Pekar's 'Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me', I didn't find it as engaging as his other work, or as instructive (or as well made) as Joe Sacco's comics on the conflict, "Palestine" and "Footnotes in Gaza". I am continually disappointed more people apparently haven't read Joe Sacco's brilliant reporting.

@8: me too.

Aaaah horseshit.

The problem with this perspective is expecting the Arabs to be oh-so-nice about accepting another bunch of European Colonials just when they'd gotten done fighting their own wars of independence from western european colonial powers...and the Ottomans were a quasi-european colonial power for centuries before that.

Why the fuck are the arabs supposed to have been so nice to people coming and taking their land?

Correct me if I'm wrong here Woody, but IIRC, it was the Russians and the Germans (mostly) and the rest of the Europeans who'd been engaged in all that systematic oppression...not the arabs. The arabs mostly lived in peaceful tolerance and coexistence with the tiny handful of actual palestinian jews and christians who lived in the Levant before the Zionists brought a ton of Eastern European Hasidim to take over.

Ridiculous.

Give it to the Chinese

The Jews did reject child sacrifice back then. Israel isn't killing its own children but rather the children loosely associated with their military adversary.

So what is Israel supposed to do? Pack up and move to Seattle? Ignore the attacks coming from their neighbor?

It's obvious that their current solution isn't a good one, but I haven't seen any better ideas from the anti Israel crowd.

The us invaded two countries when we were the victim of a terrorist attack. Israel seems pretty restrained compared to us.

@22 By utilizing the deaths of three Israeli teens to stoke the fires of this particular war, by doing very little to address the situation that leads to more and greater conflict (including recent and future rocket attacks, which have endangered and will endanger Israeli children), by sending young men off to an avoidable war--a war Likud pushed for--in which some inevitably died, by scorning previous accords and recent attempts at peace, and by encouraging familial settlement in disputed areas, Netanyahu has definitely sacrificed the safety and lives of Israeli youths to his ideals and politics.

If Hamas has sacrificed its own countrymen, women, and children through violence and for the sake of sympathy or anger, so have Netanyahu and Likud sacrificed their own. Hypocritical outrage is a specialty of politicians everywhere, and Israel is no exception.

@23 Maybe Israel should treat terrorism as a crime, and pursue criminals through means that do not kill, terrorize, evict, and impoverish whole communities. Maybe they could do that while earnestly pursuing peace, and at least halting further implementation of illegal settlements and tamping down their own terrorists and hawks.

Perhaps my suggestions are poor. However, the approach favored by Likud has been the longest, most sustained, and most regular response from Israel to anti-Israeli violence since 1948. It hasn't worked. This is obvious and demonstrable. Therefore, Israel should know better, and find a new approach to its problems. It is incumbent upon them to do so if they actually desire peace and stability.