I thought they hate America because we support Israel . . .

and if we just dropped Israel, they would leave us alone.

So, how do you explain al-Qaeda taking hostages from anti-Israel France?

A tape released Thursday on a jihadist forum shows the first images of a group of hostages including five French citizens since they were seized two weeks ago in Niger by an al-Qaeda offshoot and taken into the desert.

The four-minute tape shows still images of the hostages sitting cross-legged in the sand with a gently sloping dune behind them. French officials believe the seven hostages are now in the bordering West African nation of Mali.

The hostages were grabbed in the middle of the night on Sept. 16 from their guarded villas in the uranium mining town of Arlit in Niger where they were working for French nuclear giant Areva.

The French Foreign Ministry said the tape was encouraging because its images show the hostages alive.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2010-09-30-niger-kidnappings_N.htm?csp=34news

Could it be that there's no placating them, and there's no justification for their actions, and they simply need to be wiped out?