Jeoren wrote<snip>
<<Well, you see, the problem here is that we do not exactly hear many good things coming out of that region. Whenever Israel makes headlines over here, it is either "Israelis killed by Palestinians" or "Palestinians killed by Israelis". I have not heard anything about, say, Israel sending relief aid to the refugee camps on the Pakistan/Afghanistan borders. When you never *hear* anything good about Israel, it is hard to *say* anything good about Israel.>>
You have *very* selective eyesight. Usually Israel is one of the first with relief aid. Israeli Army helps with recovery at almost every earthquake on the globe (we have a large experience, guess how we got it :-( ).
So are the Dutch, the Germans, the Belgians, the Swiss, the Americans,
the Danish, .......... etc. But that doesn't mean we hear of it. To make
my point. Does the news in Isreal mention every Dutch contribution to rescue
operations? Thought not. And we are rather good at emergency relief aid.
(one of the latest: 'Smit Tack' in Russia .... ring a bell?)
And to further make my point. Heck the stuff _we_ are most famous for
are tulips, that posesion of hash is legal and we allow Euthanasia in certain
cases. But as far as I follow the foreign news there are a lot of rather
strange misconceptions about our (rather strict) regulations on those subjects.
Doesn't mean I go around calling people names or start insinuating things
if I come across those misconceptions.
Sonja
