We're breaking laws? What laws?

Don't try telling an Israeli they're in breach of international law. First, you'll be labelled antisemitic, because that is their standard response to any criticism of the Israeli state. If you try and press your point and they're still there to listen, and you mention that under international law their military occupation of Arab lands is illegal, they'll come back at you with the following killer argument: how can Israel be accused of an illegal occupation of a land which, under the name of Judea and Samaria, has been their property since the time of Abraham?

Ever since 1948, when the Zionists drove the Arabs from their lands and houses, the Palestinians have been counted among the world's forgotten peoples. Forgotten by the British, who were glad to wash their hands of the whole messy business, forgotten by the Americans, where the Jewish lobby has laboured night and day ever since that time to ensure the US's undying support, and forgotten even by those neighbouring Arab states whom you might have thought would be more active in publicising the plight of their fellow Arabs.

Now, with ever increasing incursions on their land, and ever increasing harassment from the fundamentalist settlers, some Palestinians have declared, and not for the first time, that enough is enough. A few have even taken the law into their own hands and attacked the interlopers with knives. Can we blame them? No one else is going to help them, so they're going to help themselves, even though they stand a very good chance of being blown away by the IDF within minutes of their deeds. Now that's what I call courage: being prepared to die for what they believe in: freedom and the right to basic human rights. And until they get it the murders are going to continue. The Palestinians aren't going to go away- indeed, they can't. Except for a fortunate few, most Palestinians are prisoners in their own land, denied the right to travel freely, squeezed by a burgeoning population of Jewish settlers who would love nothing more than to be given free rein to drive the Arabs right out of the West Bank and into Jordan, or to hell itself. They don't care... Do you?