From the April 2002 Idaho Observer:

What is happening to the Palestinians?

Although the world is perched on the edge of WWIII while we await some phony U.S.-brokered resolution between the Israelis and the Palestinians, The IO has resisted the temptation to explore the Middle East question because there is no way for us to find truth in an issue that contains 2,000 years of lies from all sides.

There is one thing we can say that will shed a significant amount of light on the situation. In 1998 I traveled to Cairo with two guys from Tennessee and a Palestinian born to educated, middle class parents in Ramallah. Jamal is a very good, godly and principled man. He, and three other Arabic men from Egypt and Saudi Arabia with which I engaged in hours of intelligent and introspective conversation had the same thing to say about Israelis/Jews.

Contrary to what the pundits have to say, Arabs do not hate Jews. They hate Israelis. They believe that the purpose of WWII was to justify the creation of Israel to perpetuate political instability in the Arab world to keep them from uniting in a manner that would allow them to globally monopolize oil.

That has been the result of Israel so there are no grounds to refute the logic. As a young man growing up in Ramallah, Jamal was one of those who went to prison in the 80s for throwing rocks as Israelis. “They treated us like dogs,” he said with a face that could not be lying.

To even pretend to know what is happening in the Middle East right now, one must understand that everything there is not as it seems. (DWH)