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Whose
Side Are You On?
To the
Editor:
I
really have to wonder where someone like Thomas Ellis [Letters,
Oct.3] gets his statistics to support his claim that millions
of Palestinians desire peace. I did see a recent poll that
75 percent of Palestinians support suicide bombings. I did
see the Palestinians joyfully dance on Sept. 11. I wonder
how he can ignore groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, who
have significant support among Palestinians, and who crave
peace, but without any Israel at all.
It’s not that the speakers at the United We Stand Against
Terrorism and With Israel rally support Israel’s occupation
of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. They support a lasting peace,
not a peace that will endanger the future existence of Israel.
Most, if not all, of the speakers, support a two-state solution.
So do most Israelis. Their vision of peace, however, is one
which provides for the security of Israel, and not, as it
has been stated by many Palestinian leaders, a peace which
is only the first step toward the ultimate destruction of
Israel.
Mr. Ellis should not ignore the fact that Israel never wanted
to occupy the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Occupation came as
a result of the 1967 Six-Day War during which Israel had to
defend herself from Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, all
of whom vowed to destroy Israel. He should not ignore the
fact that the Palestinians refused to even discuss peace until
1991, 24 years after the occupation started. Perhaps the whole
matter could have been resolved a lot sooner if Israel had
someone with whom to negotiate. He should not ignore the fact
that Jordan did not even relinquish its claim to the West
Bank until 1988. (The West Bank was never a discrete political
entity. It was captured from Jordan, which never granted Palestinians
independence.) Finally, he should not ignore the fact that
Israel has jumped at the chance for real peace when it has
been offered to her—first by Egypt and then by Jordan. Where,
exactly, does one look to find the Palestinian track record
of peace?
I must also question Mr. Ellis’ motivations. Why do he and
the members of his group clamor so loudly just against Israel?
Where is his concern for the many more millions of disenfranchised
Arabs who suffer daily at the hands of dictators and religious
monarchs? What about the millions of Moslem women who are
treated like chattel throughout the Arab world? Why do Palestinian
gays and lesbians come to Israel for safety? If Mr. Ellis
truly believes in the cause of human rights, why doesn’t he
organize rallies against Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Sudan
(where slavery is still rampant)? Perhaps he knows, as do
the supporters of Israel, that the causes of peace and human
rights can be achieved through negotiation with Israel. Perhaps
he knows that rallying against the rest of the Arab world,
where atrocities have continued unabated for years, would
be futile.
Israel and her supporters simply no longer trust Yasir Arafat.
His failure to prepare his people for compromise with Israel,
and his failure to rein in terror, have damaged the cause
of the Palestinians who do want peace. If, indeed, there are
millions of Palestinians who want peace, as Mr. Ellis alleges,
then perhaps it behooves them to select a leader who can move
the process forward. Instead, the Palestinians tolerate a
leader who cares more for his own safety (from threats by
militant Palestinians) than he does for the people he purportedly
represents.
As soon as the Palestinians stop rallying behind ill-chosen
leaders like Arafat, as soon as they present a united front
for a true peace with Israel, peace will come. Only a fool
would think that most Israelis want the present state of affairs
to continue.
Michael
Kohn
Albany
To
the Editor:
I
think folks such as Thomas Ellis who have appropriated the
peace label for themselves would be more intellectually honest
to simply acknowledge that they side with the Palestinians—notwithstanding
the violence and terrorism on the Palestinian side. Does he
seriously think that a tiny country like Israel wants to be
involved in a hellhole like Gaza and the West Bank and to
oppress the Palestinians? Does he know or care that much like
the Palestinians, every Israeli family has either suffered
casualties or personally knows someone who has died or been
injured in this conflict? Does he seriously think that a country
like Israel which underwent a high-tech boom in the ’90s wants
to go back to world ostracization and being an economic basket
case? Doesn’t he know that the majority of Israelis with the
support of the majority of American Jews would have backed
giving up the settlements under Rabin/Peres or Barak, Biblical
attachments and all, if it would have ended the conflict and
the terrorism?
To simplify this conflict as being solely about the occupation
ignores that the continuing Arab terrorism against Jews goes
back at least to the 1929 massacre of the centuries-old Jewish
community in Hebron. The Hebron massacre occurred long before
Israel’s creation in 1948 or Israel’s gaining control of the
West Bank and Gaza in 1967. The targeting of Jewish and Israeli
civilians continued through the 1950s and was the cause of
the 1956 war between Israel and Egypt, again long before the
events Mr. Ellis complains of. It continued through the ’60s
and ’70s and ’80s with Munich and Ma’alot and Leon Klinghoffer
and sadly continues unabated to this day.
And as someone who has read and appreciated Ms. Page’s fine
and sensitive writing in Metroland for years, I have
to say, et tu, Jo Page? Ms. Page questions Israeli
“manifest destiny” [Reckonings, Sept. 26], much as Mr. Ellis
criticizes the occupation. No question that Israeli policy
on the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan has zigzagged over the
years, and the Palestinians have suffered. But overall, over
the last 30 years, Israel gave land to the Egyptians and Syrians
as part of the disengagement agreements in the mid-1970s and
gave the entire Sinai peninsula back to the Egyptians as part
of the Camp David accords in 1979. Israel gave land to Jordan
as part of a peace treaty in 1994 and also withdrew from all
the major Palestinian population areas as a result of the
Oslo Accords in the 1990s. When Ehud Barak met with President
Clinton and Arafat in 2000 at Camp David, he offered to give
back virtually all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, dismantle
most of the settlements and share power in Jerusalem. In fact,
when you look at the overall picture, Israel looks to be fairly
inefficient in the manifest destiny department.
Eight-hundred and fifty thousand Palestinians expelled since
1967? Ms. Page does not mention that the Palestinian population
grew dramatically post-1967 when Palestinian infant mortality
was sharply reduced due to the Israeli introduction of better
health care. Similarly, the Palestinian economy grew in leaps
and bounds following 1967, which also contributed to Palestinian
population growth. If Israel was in the business of ethnic
cleansing, they’ve been pretty inept at it.
Pursuant to the Oslo accords, Israel ceded control of Palestinian
daily life during the 1990s to the Palestinian Authority in
the Palestinian-populated areas of the West Bank and Gaza.
This meant that the Israeli military left these areas. To
the extent that Israel has been forced to reoccupy, this has
been in direct response to Palestinians targeting Israeli
civilians. Arafat’s own Fatah organization has claimed credit
for numerous terrorist attacks even as it denounces terrorism
in the mainstream media. Where are the voices of the “peace
camp” when Israelis are killed?
Rick
Zimmer
Schenectady
To
the Editor:
Jo
Page’s piece is obviously a product of ill will toward Israelis,
and, I would say, Jews in general. I make that claim about
anti-Semitism because Israel has about half of all the Jews
in world, and so to vehemently and unfairly criticize Israel
is to effectively criticize Jews in general.
She writes that in the current crisis, “It’s easiest to see
the situation in terms of crazed Palestinians and victimized
Israelis.” Well, yes—it is easy to see it that way, because
that’s the way it is. Israeli civilians are blown apart by
homicide bombers as they try to go about their daily lives,
and thus Israel has to respond with checkpoints and curfews
in order to keep terrorists out. Israel cracked down on Arafat
(not hard enough) because he is the so-called “elected leader”
of the Palestinians, and thus is rightly to be held accountable
for the latter’s terrorism. If we here in the U.S. experienced
anything like what Israel experiences on a daily basis, we
would take much, much harsher action than Israel has to this
point (proof: look at how we responded to 9/11). Israel’s
reactions to terrorism and the murder of her citizens have
actually been quite restrained.
I’m sick of all the bias against Israel in the media, especially
the left-leaning media. You know what? It’s just a cover for
age-old anti-Semitism. Jo Page should recognize that.
Lev
Jacoby
Albany
Jo
Page replies:
Lev Jacoby appears to think that my criticism of Israel’s
policies and actions is the same thing as a rejection of Jewish
identity. But by that logic, his own valid criticism of the
heinousness of suicide bombings would mean that he rejects
Arab identity.
In addition, it is unclear to me why he thinks the ratio of
Israeli Jews to Diaspora Jews makes what I wrote anti-Semitic,
in his view. Leveling unsupported charges of anti-Semitism
is incendiary speech, stifling both compassion and dialogue,
each of which are needed in greater measure.
Rick Zimmer is absolutely right about the lowered infant mortality
rate. And the increased birth rate among Palestinians has
boosted population as well. But he is absolutely wrong in
reading into what I have written charges that the Israelis
are practicing ‘ethnic cleansing.’ Perhaps that is what the
statistics suggested to him, but there was no editorial prompting
in that direction from me.
Editor’s Note:
Erin Sullivan, formerly Metroland’s managing editor,
now is news editor at City Paper, Baltimore’s alternative
newsweekly.
Metroland
welcomes typed, double-spaced letters (computer printouts
OK), addressed to the editor. Or you may e-mail them to: metroland@metroland.net.
Metroland reserves the right to edit letters for length; 300
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Send
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or e-mail us at metroland@metroland.net.
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