Does anyone know that the Palestinians living in the occupied territories around Israel are an oppressed minority who have had their land stolen, their houses destroyed and been forced to live marginal existences under a foreign government which they never elected? Does anyone know that what is happening to the Palestinians is a lot like what happened to Native Americans over two hundred years ago? If you read the LCN Syndicate, Slate or The Nation you would see a few people who know these facts. But if you read The New York Times, Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, the wire stories in your local paper or get your news of television, well, you'd just think those Palestinians are downright nasty people who are getting their just desserts.

Somehow, Americans have become convinced that rocket propelled grenades, missiles launched from helicopters and automatic weapon fire is a just response against a rag tag group of protesters who are throwing... rocks. Only in Orwell's 1984 could a person shoot rock throwers and win broad public support. Well, in 1984 or the United States, apparently. Remember what happened to Rodney King? That's nothing compared to what happened to that little boy who died in his father's arms. When I mentioned that event, in disgust, to a friend of mine (I'm not naming her because, well, I hope she'll rethink her position) she said, "That boy and his father had no business in that neighborhood. They were obviously there to throw rocks."

Okay, she's Jewish. I've heard a lot of defense for the practice of blowing up rock throwers from my Jewish friends and it shocks me. I mean, these are otherwise rational and compassionate people. There's a certain amount of outrage, of course, that causes mental blind spots. My aforementioned friend pointed out, with much horror, that the Palestinians brutally stomped two soldiers to death. It seemed that she and I just had a disconnect of outrage. The soldier's death affected her, the little boy's affected me.

But that doesn't explain the pro-Israeli sentiment in the United States, or our pro-Israeli policies at the federal level. Brutal acts were committed on both sides of the Serbian war, but we were still able to identify that Slobodan Milosevic started the conflict, and that his army was being more systematic in its attempts to wipe out everyone else in the region. So why can't we be honest about Israel?

I'm no expert on the history of the region and realize that Yasser Arafat is a rather corrupt and spineless leader with a nasty brutal streak. But he is also a revolutionary leader of oppressed people. Israel didn't exist before 1948. The state was created because, in the aftermath of World War II, Jews around the world wanted a homeland and in a moral sense they deserved that the world give them anything they wanted. In a practical sense, unfortunately, they wanted Israel and there were already people living there. That, rather than ingrained anti-Semitism, is why the Muslim countries hate Israel -- they had land taken from them and saw many of their own people to be dispossessed. When the Muslim world planned to go to war, Israel struck first, beat them all in six days, and grabbed more territory, thus dispossessing more Muslims.

Now, if we can all accept that Israel has the right to exist, and I think most agree on that, then we should also accept that Israel should give back every inch of territory that it took during the six day war and that it should pay reparations to Muslims and descendants of Muslims who were affected by the land grabs or who have suffered the loss of life and property in the conflicts which followed and rage up until this day. Reparations? Yes. Germany and German companies have had to pay for the wrongs they committed during the Holocaust and Israel should have to pay for its wrongs in the 20th century.

I'm sure the United Nations would agree -- but only if the U.S. stopped blindly backing Israel and started on a course of fairness in its own policies. Israel, which has always relied on U.S. support should be carefully -- Americans don't like bullies and they do like underdogs. If this conflict goes on the way it has, in front of all those cameras, the sentiment of voters will change and policy will slowly change with it. Sometimes, stability can be assured not by making acquisitions, but by making concessions. It is odd that Israel, home to on of the world's oldest and most philosophically complex and adept religions, hasn't realized that. But then, ancient wisdom is often distorted by modern politics.

Michael Maiello doubts he'll ever see the Palestinians get a fair shake from the American media.