Mr. X's guide to not sounding like a moron

Stop, right now. I mean it. Stop talking about Israel and Palestine like you know what you are talking about. Stop pretending you cared enough to discover the truth and form a balanced opinion on the subject. We all do it. I'll be the first to admit that my sophistries have little to do with the facts. In fact, my specialty is piecing together bits of suggestive information in an intuitive way to give the illusion of depth, when, in fact, there is none.  The divide between us is that the web of my reasoning is so superficially deep (or is it deeply superficial?), that you can't dispel the illusion.  To help make your poor excuse for reasoning appear solid, we present "Mr. X's guide to not sounding like a moron when conversing drunkenly about the Middle East."
The first step is to realize that, although helpful, a brain upgrade is not required to sound intelligent.  You must simply learn to regurgitate facts as if you possessed understanding.  The easiest way is to connect your facts as though your mind were pursuing a logical chain of thoughts.  Then insert your opinion as though it were another fact falling soundly into place.  For example,

"The state of Israel was founded on May 15th, 1948, which was only 3 days after May 12th.  Both dates as well as 48 being divisible by 3, we can assign Israel a value of 333, the opposite of 666.  Thus, Arafat, and not Kofi Annan, is the devil... fact."

So go out there and arm yourselves with facts and soon you'll be pontificating with the best of them.  Now while there are real barriers to gaining facts on this conflict (the fact that those of us lucky enough to have a choice between Pokemon, Digimon, and Power Rangers are bored by history), there is a flash presentation that can help you avoid looking stupid. After all, while you may not care enough about the truth to discover it on your own, there are plenty of people who are waiting for the opportunity to publicly highlight your ignorance.

And I haven't forgotten you who may be disappointed that it is now harder to expose ignorance. I encourage you to write to Arthur Lenk, a legal adviser at Israel's ministry of foreign affairs for his gross mistake of assuming that his country has been trying to make peace for the last 50 years.

You can read Mr. Lenk's appraisal of Israeli courts as above the UN here. Be careful to note how he is "furious with the Palestinians for forcing us to put up a barrier near my town - instead of investment in education and healthcare and hi-tech." Surely, if he had received a better education, Mr. Lenk might appreciate how this attitude permits our investments to be squandered in the name of security. Surely, once it's precious security fence is complete, Israel will be able to sell off all those expensive weapons that, in focusing their damage on too specific a target, were ineffective in combating terror.