My life in Morocco...

1. An official policy of racial segregation formerly practiced in the Republic of South Africa, involving political, legal, and economic discrimination against nonwhites.
2. A policy or practice of separating or segregating groups.
3. The condition of being separated from others; segregation.

The official definition of apartheid does not include the following, however, for my purposes I will adapt the word, as I can't seem to find one better. One ethnic minority ruling over another, hostile, ethnic majority. Such as it occurred in South Africa, the former Yugoslavia and elsewhere.

Mahmoud Darwish has referred to the conflict as "a struggle between two memories."  Both sides have historic wrongs to be righted, and both have resorted to absurd tactics - how does killing children or denying people food help to protect the religious icons and places so meaningful to Christians, Jews and Muslims?

Here is where I now stand:

3.9 million Palestinians are registered as U.N. refugees.  The concern of Israelis is that letting these refugees into the country would overwhelm the "Jewishness" of Israel and present a security problem.  For the latter, they could be right.  But as for the former - how soon they forget that Israel is a land for all of us?  The Dome of the Rock, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Western Wall, etc etc etc.  What will it take for the people of Israel to drop their violent nationalism and consider the lives of the Palestinian people?  Now don't get me wrong - I am as against Hamas as any other peace-loving American and I do not support any "terrorist" efforts - but who's to say that Hamas is more of a terrorist than Israel?

26% of Palestinians are unemployed.  Most make less than $2,000 a year, while the majority of Israelis make around $30,000. Almost 50% of Palestinians live below the poverty rate (there considered about $2USD/day). Israel's poverty rate?  0%.

Regardless of what's been done to Jews in the past (which, I admit, is horrifying and unwarranted), it's as if no one ever told the people of Israel that two wrongs don't make a right.

More horrifying is America's unwavering support of Israel.  I've said it before and I'll say it again - we have no business with them.  We claim that we don't deal with terrorists, but as the definition of terrorism is...

ter·ror·ism   (tr-rzm)
n.

The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.

...then how can we possibly not describe Israel's actions as terrorism?