How did Israel go from being the plucky underdog kid that most in the US and Europe admired, to a country so widely (if inaccurately) reviled as an oppressor and the source of all that is wrong in the Middle East?

The answer I think is the belief system at the heart of "liberalism".  The core of this belief system is that people (and countries) are innately evil, and if given the opportunity they will oppress anyone weaker than they.

This explains the infatuation of liberals with both the weak (e.g. Arabs), and internationalism (e.g. the UN) as a means of controlling and weakening the power of the strong (e.g. the US, UK, Microsoft...).

So by surviving the assaults of its neighbors for 50 years, and (horrors) prospering far beyond any of them while doing so, Israel has become in the Middle East what the US has become in the world at large... a blazing beacon refuting the core liberal value that to be strong is to be evil, simply by virtue of having achieved strength.

In the liberal mind, strength can never be achieved honorably: strength can only come from having oppressed the weak, who are by definition noble, even if they be bloodthirsty.

So, the next time you see the US pilloried about human rights by some murdering autocrat who chairs a UN 'rights' committee, or hear a US politician of the Democratic persuasion screech about "fascism" in the US and the government "chilling" free speech, or hear the only democracy in the Middle East (except for Iraq) accused of aggression for defending itself against rocket attacks; and you wonder just what the hell is going on...
just remember the simple credo of the liberal left: "Strong is Wrong".

For the liberal left it trumps all logic, as it must, least their whole belief system be shown for what it truly is — a gaily colored piñata that contains no sweets, only a poisonous misanthropy.

Dave Runyan    9 04 06