Europe's Biggest Ghetto

Now we can add Lebanon to the long list of military occupations in the world -- you know, those countries where everywhere you go, there are soldiers with dangerous weapons standing around as a reminder that you are either in danger or are dangerous. Western countries usually employ police for this purpose and while they tend to be less visible and don't walk around with semiautomatic weapons, they are increasingly ridiculously invasive as this Wart on Terrorism carries on.

This begs the question, again, of what kind of a ghetto Israel has become where it must insulate itself by instilling violence and trepidation in its neighbors.

The fact is, even World War II didn't waver Europe's obsessively hateful urge to expel Jews from its lands. Instead, Europe devised a brilliant new concept of ghettoization: religious incentive residency, i.e. we'll personally give you every right to overtake a small block of already inhabited land in the Middle East because millennia before, people who may or may not have been your ancestors lived there, according to the holy book that you believe in as a cherished, if at times fictionalized (who lives 175 years?), account of your history.

Certainly, the state of Israel has done nothing to dispel Jewish victimhood paranoia and the increasing violence and military presence in the neighborhood isn't helping either.