Very rarely do major newspapers publish articles

openly endorsing both the logic and the practice of

ethnic cleansing. By published Benny Morris's "In '48 Israel did what it had to do" (http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-morris26jan26,1,7470307.story>), however, the Los Angeles Times did just that. Describing the 1948 purge of Palestinians from what would become Israel as "ethnic cleansing," Morris laments the fact that the state of Israel did not succeed in purifying itself of its Arab population, whose birthrate now "threaten[s] to overwhelm the Jewish state, forcing Israelis to defend themselves in ways that many find unacceptable."

Have we not yet learned the lesson of the last century -- a lesson written in the blood of millions of innocents, including 6,000,000 Jews -- that states that attempt to organize themselves along ethnic or religious lines can do so only at the price of unspeakable atrocities? In the shadow of the chimneys and the gas chambers of the 20th century, who dare concede to any state, Israel included, the right to purify itself of those people who, by an accident of birth, were born with the "wrong" race (Arab) or the "wrong" religion?