Some people say that Israel gets treated like a second class citizen in the family of nations. That's probably true. But it isn't without reason. I read the pro-Israel articles posted here and using the power of JoeUser, I'm taking advantage of the equal time this site provides to give a different point of view.

    The nation of Israel was a gift. Yes, Jews lived there at the time of creation and those particular Jews have a historical claim to the region. But they didn't get their nation through force of arms. They didn't get their nation through a compelling argument for self determination. They got their nation because 6 million Jews were murdered in World War II. You can debate back and forth all day about whether what mighta, shoulda, woulda been if the holocaust hadn't happened. But the bottom line is that the United States with Britain pushed through the creation of Israel largely out of sympathy. The nation of Israel was thus born. But it was supposed to be 2 nations. Transjordan did indeed occupy some of the territory originally envisioned to be part of a "Palestinian" state. But not all. The Arabs responded the same way they have responded since the original crusades, they tried to push the invaders into the sea. They lost. And Israel, through subsequent wars (that were not Israel's fault) gained additional territory.

    But to leave it at that would be an incomplete picture. The incomplete picture that many Americans cling to.

    To Arabs, many if not most Jews living today in Israel are just plain foreigners. Westerners at that. They're people from Russia, eastern Europe and the United States mostly. Anyone reading this, if they want, can be a Jew. Poof. You're a Jew. You're from China? No problem. You can convert. Move to Israel. Get a settlement in the West Bank. That is how many Arabs look at it.

    Israel is just a Western colony backed by the United States that is full of foreigners. Foreigners who, year after year, take land from people whose descendents have lived in that region for hundreds if not thousands of years. To Arabs, the claim that some European or American calling himself Jewish can therefore have a historical claim to that region is offensive. What? Some ancestor 15 generations back came from that part of the world? You think Ariel Sharon's family has some multi-generational claim to the land that Israel currently occupies? Whatever you want to call the Palestinians, there's no debate about where their ancestors came from.

    I wonder how Americans would feel in an alternative reality where the Ottoman Empire was the world's super power and that the state of New York was designated as a land where "Native Americans" could return and settle (to the exclusion of people who happened to live in New York). How would they feel if most of these "Native Americans" were not actually from North America but in fact came from say China and Russia and the Middle East but still claimed to be "Native Americans" because their families, at some point down the line, chose to Cherokees? What if, in fact that the Native American claim was actually 2000 years old instead of just 100 years? How do you think Americans would react then? In fact, we do know since we can see exactly how Americans dealt with people on lands that they wanted. Live in Oklahoma? Did you know the entire state was originally set up by the United States as a land for American Indians? But they changed their minds later on. Which is particularly galling given the background on how the American Indians got there in the first place.

    This doesn't excuse the terrorism of the Palestinians. And it is that -- terrorism. From their vantage point, they feel like they have no alternative. They're desperate. Israel doesn't exist thanks to its own hard work alone like Draginol claimed. It exists largely thanks to BILLIONS (that's with a of dollars in aid from the United States every single year. In Arabic eyes, if it looks like a colony, acts like a colony, maybe it is a colony. A colony that year after year claims it wants peace while not addressing the basic problem: The foreigners who moved in who happen to call themselves "jews" have no more legitimate claim to the lands that Arabs have lived on for centuries than the Chinese do.

    So why do Europeans see Israel as a threat to world peace? Because Israel is a luxury that the west may not be able to afford. Think about it. Where did modern terrorism come from? Northern Ireland? Think again. Suicide bombers are the invention of Islamic fanatics in their attempt to try to reclaim the land of Israel from this latest western crusade. And that instability, that violence, that terrorism has spread across the entire Islamic world. Would it have happened if Israel had never been re-created? Probably not.  Without Israel, the corrupt Arabic regimes would not be able to focus the resentment of their masses on something in order to deflect from their own incompetence. The United States would not have to prop up the petty dictatorships in countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia.  In other words, the world, as a whole, has paid a high price for Israel to exist. And has its existence somehow benefited the world in some way that can possibly outweigh the misery it has caused directly or indirectly? I don't see it.

    When Israel is listed as a threat to world peace, it doesn't mean that the people of Israel have intentionally done ill. It doesn't take responsibility for the evils committed by the Palestinians or other Arabs away. It just is a straight forward calculus that regardless of blame, the existence of Israel has created a lot more problems than it has solved. And that there are two sides to any story. It's not anti-Semitism. It's not hatred of Jews. It is just a realistic assessment of world affairs. The policies of Israel and the west have, like it or not, created an environment that has generated 3 generations of terrorists now.  Americans can be for Israel on principle. But Europeans have to deal with the mess created by America on a daily basis because of their geographic closeness. It's easy to have high minded principles when you have an ocean to separate you.

    Israel is a threat because it is seen by many, as a western colony that takes land away from peoples who have lived there for centuries to hand over to foreigners whose families have little or no claim on those lands. From that springs anger and hatred in a region that still remembers previous western crusades. That hatred in turn creates terrorism that affects the entire world. Not everyone cares who's fault the terrorism rests on. They care, however, that it happens and what the root cause of it is.