... we had asymetrical access to the press.

When I was researching the seaming impossibility of understanding the lack of progress toward a peaceful solution to the conflict in Palestine, I was surprised to find some scholarly work that focused on exactly this issue. I'll go back and look for the details, but for our purposes here, it's enough to say his book investigated the parallels between the Irish/English, Palestinian/Israeli and the South African/Anti-Apartheid situations.

Much of the difficulty IMHO, and the author makes this clear in his analysis also, is that the power of the occupier is such that they control the way the world sees the issues framed, and of course it is in their interest to make sure that from the perspective of someone 'outside' the conflict, everything appears to based in 'mindless hatred' and 'centuries old tribal warfare' or 'deep religious divisions'.

So the occupied are not only fighting the occupiers, but also the collective miss-understanding of the whole world, that insists it 'knows' that the 'problem' cannot be fixed because the 'bad guys', (read IRA, PLO, or ANC) are irrational players who refuse to 'get with the program' 'be reasonable' or 'civilized' or what ever false reason is being foisted on the mediocre minds of the consumers of the co-opted press who after all have no real stake in the conflict itself but none the less fell very strongly that they 'know what is going on'.

What they inevitably think they know, is that the occupied and their leadership are irrational people with unrealistic demands, and it's obviously impossible to 'make them happy'. The other side of the false narrative is that the occupiers are civilized people with reasonable expectations who face extermination if they are not allowed to deal in a pragmatic manner with the imminent threat.

It's become clear after the fact, that allowing the Irish Catholics to share power in Northern Ireland has not resulted in mass emigration of Protestants, and the political inclusion of black Africans in South Africa has not resulted in the extermination of white South Africans, and so I believe that at some distant time, Palestinians and Israelis will probably live together in peace.

However, all of this will not come about because the world decides it's important to understand the truth about the roots of the conflict before voicing strong opinions. The co-opted press will continue to spread dis-information right up until the peace-treaty papers are signed, and the killing ends. At that point, all the folks who right now firmly believe that there is no way to make peace with the Palestinians will suddenly be greatly surprised, and will forever after deny that their collective ignorance had anything to do with the fact that peace took so long in coming.

When peace finally comes to the Middle East, all the dopes in the world will think it's because the Palestinians suddenly decided to be reasonable.

Glad you decided to top-post this also.

It will give the usual suspects another opportunity to bemoan the death of that great guy Mountbatten.

... theories, I've shared it previously, but it wasn't until recently that I discovered the book that I mentioned on-line.(a used book on Amazon) The reason that I mentioned the book was simply to point out that someone else noticed some parallels in the struggles in Ireland, Palestine and South Africa.

Native vs Settler; Ethnic conflict in Israel/Palestine, Northern Ireland, and south Africa

By Thomas G. Mitchell

I had shared a few words with Zeus-Boy about the seeming lack of poular understanding of the Irish struggles as it had impacted my own family. I had noticed that even amongst family there was a reluctance to discuss personal experience as it relates to Irish history and I attributed that to a reluctance to discuss heart-felt matters with people who one must suppose had only superficial information to go on, and that almost exclusively based on what they have read in the main stream press.

So the main points are my opinion. As far as the book goes, I didn't get farther than reading the few pages on availible on Amazon but what I read was striking as far as the parallels between the popular understanding/miss-understandi­ng of the Irish 'troubles' which I had personal knowledge of, and the Palestinian conflict which I don't but which I had been suspecting suffered from the same syndrome.

Mitchell makes the observation (if I understand him properly) that what is missing in discussing the three situations as purely ethnic in nature, is the fact that one of the parties to each of the conflicts had been a 'settler population' that at one time in history, and was part of a colonizing effort.

To overlook that fact is to ignore a much too important part of the picture.

That is going to take a bit of digestion when combined with Mitchell's perspective.

... don't the French swear that Inspector Cleuseau is modeled after him?

Not so much assasinated as put out of our his misery.