Hi Sarah, You are absolutely right: violation of human rights should be condemned equally. In fact, that is precisely my point. According to Human Rights Watch and many other international observers, the Janjaweed are in fact armed and funded by the Sudanese army, which is obviously under the authority of the Sudanese government. That means that the Sudanese government is responsible for killing approximately 400,000 of its own citizens. According to this AP article published in today's International Herald Tribune, 183 Iraqi civilians were killed yesterday alone - not by Americans, but by Sunni insurgents. Meanwhile, here you can see a detailed breakdown of numbers of Israelis and Palestinians whose deaths are attributed to the conflict. The numbers cover all conflict-related deaths since 2000, and the source is a Palestinian organization called Miftah. According to this source, the total number of Palestinians who died due to the conflict in the last seven years is 4,711. The total number of Israelis is 1,113. Obviously, one death is too many. But my point out is that singling out Israel for condemnation is illogical, especially given the context of the Middle East, where the vast, vast majority of violent deaths are caused not by Israel (and not by the United States), but by Arabs. I do not use these facts to justify the invasion of Iraq, or the Israeli army's incursions in the Palestinian Authority, but rather to point out that those who single out Israel for condemnation, while ignoring what is going on all over the Middle East - not to mention most of the world (Congo and Zimbabwe, for example) - are taking a position that is morally and intellectually dubious, at best.