Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, July 2008, pages 39-40

Other People's Mail

Compiled by Kate Hilmy and Delinda Hanley

The Blitz Was Less Scary

To The Providence Journal, May 4, 2008

A gunman killed eight students at a seminary in Jerusalem which teaches that Israelis have a divine right to Palestinian land. This tragedy—the first attack in Jerusalem in four years—was front-page news on March 7.

But decades of killing Palestinians is hardly worth mentioning.

Few Americans know that in just a few days before the Jerusalem attack, Israelis, using air strikes and other assaults with American-supplied weapons, had killed 120 Palestinians, including women and babies in Gaza. And few know that for months Gaza has been experiencing the worst humanitarian crisis in 60 years because of Israel’s continued denial of food, drinking water, medicine and electricity.

Unless you happen to notice an occasional small item on an inside page of The Journal or you get news from B’Tselem, Rabbis for Human Rights, Gush Shalom or Amnesty International, you won’t hear what’s going on in Palestine. A recent article, “Gazan Holocaust,” by Jennifer Loewenstein of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, gives an idea what the Palestinians are experiencing.

My life in London during the Nazi bombings in the early 1940s was less terrifying.

Rod Driver, Richmond, RI

Reign of Terror in Hebron

To The Independent, April 21, 2008

Your front page article describing the criminal activities of Israel Defense Force soldiers in Hebron, as reported by the courageous group Breaking the Silence, is no surprise to anyone like myself, who has actually been to Hebron.

But let there be no doubt that such activities are spread right across the whole of the West Bank. Military “incursions,” night-time arrests, insulting behavior at checkpoints, detention without charge, house demolitions, and theft of water and land by expanding settlements, the Wall and roads for Israeli use only are everyday events.

It is true that Israel does from time to time prosecute soldiers for particularly gross violations, but it is not true that these actions are just the unfortunate result of young men and women being given unlimited power over powerless Palestinians, as the military authorities would have us believe.

What is really happening in Palestine is the terrorizing of an occupied civilian population by state and settlers with the objective of taking over as much of the West Bank (“Samaria and Judea”) as possible by further ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their land and villages. What I don’t understand is why U.S. and European politicians shut their eyes to all this; surely they can’t really be unaware of it?

And I don’t understand why Israel is treated as part of the civilized Western world.

Mike Barnes, Watford, UK

Don’t Overlook Palestinian Tragedy

To the Corvallis Gazette-Times, April 14, 2008

This is the time of year when institutions frequently recall the horrors of the Nazi holocaust against European Jews.

OSU [Oregon State University] ordinarily sponsors such programs and Corvallis’ Friends of the Library is offering a holocaust literature program for young readers.

May I suggest that institutions broaden their vision and include in their concern the Nakba, the ongoing 60-year tragedy of the Palestinian people?

For more than a half-century this beleaguered people suffered loss of all but a fragment of their native land, their farms, much of their water, their olive groves, their homes, their freedom to Israeli occupiers. And their catastrophe continues.

The 750,000 people who fled incursions of armed bands into their homeland in 1948 largely remain impoverished refugees in foreign lands.

Those who clung to their ancestral homes live as prisoners, hemmed in by walls, by occupiers’ roads they cannot use, occupiers’ laws that don’t protect them, more than 500 checkpoints that control their coming and going.

We may grieve for past injustices, but to close our eyes to the present mammoth injustice—indeed, to participate in it as a nation—makes hypocrites of us all.

Jeanne Riha, Corvallis, OR

Perspectives on Hamas

To The Washington Post, April 19, 2008

Finally with Mahmoud as-Zahar’s piece, Post readers can see for themselves what Hamas has to say. However, far from “dripping with hatred for Israel,” as the editorial on the opposite page said, the piece was astonishingly moderate, well reasoned and full of respect for Judaism, which it firmly distinguishes from Zionism (as do I, an American Jew).

Mr. Zahar requires only what every spokesman for those occupied requires: that the colonist get its jackboot off the neck of his people.

Miriam M. Reik, Stone Ridge, NY

Israel, Gaza, and the U.S.

To Vanity Fair, June 2008

There were two things that struck me about “The Gaza Bombshell” [by David Rose, April]. The first was the absolute stranglehold Israel has over the Palestinians, to the point where the Israelis have to approve arms shipments to the Palestinians. This must end. The second was that no other country, human-rights abuser or not, with or without electoral systems, has the influence over our domestic and foreign policy that Israel does. This too must end.

Betz Uber, Chandler, AZ

Carter’s Mideast View

To The New York Times, April 30, 2008

I find it sad, outrageous and shameful that Jimmy Carter is being vilified by not only Israel but also our own administration. Mr. Carter should be praised for his courage and resolve to promote dialogue and foster peace. He is not only doing what President Bush should have been doing for the last seven years, but he’s also succeeding.

Karen Russo, Arlington, VT

Jimmy Carter, Diplomat

To the San Francisco Chronicle, April 24, 2008

Your objections to former President Jimmy Carter’s meeting with Hamas (“Carter’s freelance diplomacy,” editorial April 23) are unconvincing and disappointing. The “baby steps” approach you tout for solving the Israeli-Palestinian problem has been tried for six decades and has gotten us nowhere. It was bold moves, such as that of the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, and sustained pressure by the United States that created the opportunity for peace between Egypt and Israel.

In October 2007, a who’s who of national security and foreign policy experts wrote to President Bush urging “genuine dialogue” with Hamas and pointing out the “utmost importance” of an end to Israeli settlement expansion.

Instead, the Bush administration and Israel continue to refuse to deal with Hamas, and Congress (with help from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi) continues to pass one-sided resolutions extolling the virtues of Israel while ignoring its illegal and immoral treatment of Palestinians.

Khaled Galal, San Francisco, CA

Out of Mind

To San Francisco Chronicle, April 21, 2008

On any given day, how many people in Iraq have to be killed before it becomes front page news?

David Talley, Berkeley, CA

A Failure by Iraq’s Government

To TheWashington Post, April 18, 2008

In explaining why U.S. troops should stay in Iraq until at least 2010, Capt. Ann Gildroy and Michael O’Hanlon (op-ed, April 16) listed six reasons (including the aim of holding national elections) for us to stay. The six reasons boil down to this: “The Iraqi government cannot effectively do its job, so we have to help.”

What Capt. Gildroy and Mr. O’Hanlon didn’t say was that a major reason that the Iraqi government cannot discharge its responsibilities is that a large majority of Iraqis view the government as illegitimate and a puppet of the United States because the election that brought that government to power was held under U.S. occupation. Why do Capt. Gildroy and Mr. O’Hanlon think a second election held under U.S. occupation will produce different results?

Chris Wilcox, Severn, MD

Truth in Labeling

To the San Francisco Chronicle, April 22, 2008

Isn’t it about time that we all, starting with you in the media, begin referring to the Iraq war as “The Iraq Occupation?” After all, Congress never declared a war. I think that if that simple change were to be adopted it would make it much easier for the public to understand what we are doing there.

Hal Wells, Oakland, CA

A Good Use of Bush, Cheney

To the San Francisco Chronicle, April 21, 2008

Regarding the question posed as to how the next president should use our current crew of soon-to-be-out-of-work potential statesmen: Didn’t President Bush recently say if he weren’t currently employed he’d like to experience the “excitement” of confronting danger on the front lines fighting for democracy?

Well, I’d say that can be arranged!

And while we’re at it, let’s share the “romance” with Vice President Dick Cheney, and allow them both to make up for their draft-dodging pasts.

Or even better, assign them to the bedpan and soiled linen detail at Walter Reed Hospital for the next 20, 30 years or so.

I’m sure they would have lots to talk about with the disabled, amputee veterans and hear all their fun war stories.

Tom McAfee, San Francisco, CA

Victims of Horrors

To The New York Times, April 24, 2008

“Race and American Memory,” by Roger Cohen inspired fierce competing emotions in me, a middle-aged African-American woman.

I wept and laughed in tandem that Mr. Cohen, a white man, had a glaring awareness of the modesty of the King Center in Atlanta versus the largeness and sophistication of the United States Memorial Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC.

Both American slavery followed by Jim Crow and the Nazi Holocaust are human catastrophes that deserve our recognition.

But it is baffling why our domestic disaster on race is relegated to, at best, a second-tier status compared with the Holocaust. Many blacks believe that Jewish history is more respected and valued than black Americans’ history.

We blacks just want equal awareness and respect for our American experience.

Beni Dakar, Duluth, GA

A New Image for the U.S.

To the International Herald Tribune, May 5, 2008

Regarding the article “U.S. releases Al Jazeera cameraman”: Since the U.S. last week released the Al Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Hajj after six years at Guantánamo Bay without charging him, there is an opportunity for the three leading U.S. presidential contenders to start improving America’s image in the Arab world.

A letter expressing sympathy, if not apology, from each of them would demonstrate that they are serious about changing U.S. policy.

Robert Lackenbach, Diano Marina, Italy

Pushing out the Moderates

To the International Herald Tribune, April 30, 2008

Regarding the article “Muslim educator’s dream branded a threat in the U.S.” (April 28): One would think that an Arab-language public school in New York would serve an important pedagogical function in broadening the cultural horizons of its students.

But apparently not to Daniel Pipes and other representatives of the far right, who appear to wish to extinguish every scintilla of Islam and Islamic culture in American society.

We are now told by these conservatives that it is not the terrorists who threaten American life, but rather the “law-abiding” and “middle group” of Muslims. In other words, there is no place for Muslims of any kind in America, and how dare they exercise their rights, and express their religious values, in a peaceful, law-abiding manner.

These craven conservative organizations feel threatened by all Muslims, as the latter offer a different political narrative than their own, one that frequently criticizes the U.S. role in the Middle East and U.S. support for Israel. Their suggestion that the Muslim community, which in the United States is extremely diverse, seeded with immigrants from a wide range of countries, and moderate in ideology, will force shariah upon unsuspecting Americans is obviously absurd. But it provides these conservatives with a useful political weapon to smear the Muslim identity and circumscribe debate on U.S. foreign policy.

Erik Lindell, East Greenbush, NY