No one – Gay, Israeli, American, nor any other people would want the unspeakable conditions forced on the Palestinians to fall upon them. The Palestinians need to be treated – deserve to be treated humanely. So what does the international community do to address the Palestinian issue? What would you want if YOU were left to endure a life of squalor and poverty amid a prison-like confinement that batters the human soul? I don’t know of one Israeli family that would trade places with a Palestinian family. We know that in large swaths of the American landscape, Gays experience nothing short of the internationally regarded “American Gay Apartheid.” This incremental approach to achieving equality is wrong-headed and ultimately doomed to fail. Even in the most enlightened and progressive nations on Earth, Gays are still very often treated as first class taxpayers and second class citizens. As any reader of “The Gay State” all ready knows, I do not favor an approach that involves degrees of equality. And in the spirit of equality and fairness, just as the people of the Gay State need to be made whole and then some, Palestinians deserve nothing less in fair and equitable treatment. The Israeli’s on the other hand, have been made whole, but they have not yet received their “and then some.” The international community and Israel’s Middle East neighbors in particular, need to atone for the treatment they have foisted on the Israeli people. It does however, give the oppressors an opportunity to finally do the right thing and make amends for the past injustices they have wrought on the Gay people. Does it even the score for thousands of years of savage and brutal oppression? No, it doesn’t. Its conditions deserve to be improved upon as never before. My people, the people of the Gay State for instance, are due for the opportunity to be made whole by the entire international community. Any group – any minority that has been wronged, should be made whole and then some. As a people, they have all ready been grossly and unjustly wronged. And unlike so many who take a stand on Israel, I am not among the chorus who say the solution to the Middle East involves the relocation of Israel. As a leader of a people – the Gay community and an elected leader of the FIGS Party – the Free, Independent Gay State Party, I can tell you that the issue is anything but a sterile academic debate when it comes to freedom, independence and the very survival of a people. Unlike many others who take a stand on the Israeli solution, I think too many posture and pontificate without having anything at risk in the debate. May it thrive and prosper like few other nations in history. Israel should exist and has every right to exist. The answer to whether Israel should exist is unmistakably and unequivocally yes.