Letters to the Editor
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Nice to see Salon's new neoconservatism is drawing the desired readership.
Actually, the Palestinians as a people were in solidarity with Americans on 9/11, as the most cursory research or simply asking would have taught you fascist, inbred, gibbering idiots. Indeed, the whore media had to gin up old footage, over a year old, of dancing Palestinians. There are stories that somewhere, sometime, you really could find Palestinians celebrating the attacks, but it's about as true as the spitting on returning Vietnam troops in the US stories.
Now, of course, what our new contingent of vile racists don't want to point out is that NEARBY ISRAELIS WERE LITERALLY DANCING ON 9/11 WATCHING IT THAT DAY. Now, I want to see you declare THEM your enemy.
The difference? The US never attacked Israel. Israel DID attack the US - look at the Liberty. And Israelis DID gloat about 9/11. And the PM of Israel and a former PM of Israel said it was a good thing. But the US DID attack the Palestinians by proxy. The tens of thousands of Palestinians murdered by the Israelis were killed with American weapons, bought by the tax money of Americans, and the contributions of Americans.
I now think that not only should Ford have been imprisoned for pardoning Nixon, but that all Nixon supporters from that point on should have been sterilized and forbidden to adopt children. Perhaps we would not have this generation's crop of home-grown brownshirts to deal with, and it would be highly moral by your standards.
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A few ideas for Rashid Khalidi
I have always found Mr Khalidi an original thinker and plan to read his new book as soon as possible. What follows are ideas that he might have persued, with a nod to his greatness:
1) In voting against Partition in 1947, it was the leaders not the intellectual Palestinians that said No. Once, in Jericho on the day Arafat returned, a doctor sitting in the blazing heat whispered to me: "I was a secretary for the rulers of Palestine. I was the one who translated the UN Resolution. I stole it and brought it to my friends who were the intelligencia there."
"We spent the entire night reading and debating the merits of Partition all night long. By dawn we all agreed it was essential to say YES. But our leaders did not listen to us, the brightest of the Palestinian people. And they refused our unanimous decision." He then looked around at the dispossessed kids all around us. and said, "And now it's their turn" giving the sense that had he and his comrades been listened to, all the mess of 1995 and now in 2007 would have been entirely different." A mistake.
Next: 2) The Palestinians as shown in Danny Rubenstein's "The People of Nowhere" and in Rashid Masharawi's great movie "Haifa" are living in stoic delusion. BUT, they treated the land as the Jews treated the Torah. Land for the Palestianian agrarians was the text and the Jews did not know that as they came and conquered.
3) The Israeli systemic violence against the Palestinians, who most call Arabs, misses entirely the people who remain in Palestine, and the Israeli public, who should know better, never see what is being done to the Palestinians in their name. Willful ignorance is born of guilt. If the Jewish Israeli's were to see on Israeli TV or elswhere how violent we are to the Palestinians, they would rise up. but TV in Israel is terribly selective, showing all Palestinians as scary not scared.
4) I still, after reading Khalidi's piece, understand why Israel and Palestine, a tiny part of the middle east, have yet to show the will to a truce and a real dialogue. It is maddenly how close the two ethnic entities have come to discussion only to have that marginalized and now made illegal??!!!
5) That this surreal inability to come to a fair peace is the fault of the politicians and less: the citizens. We are after all: cousins. One day of dialogue, filled with fear and then inevitably by truth telling, laughter and tears, should have been mandated in some way by Rabin after Oslo. It is really beyond comprehension why the people are legally (as of now) kept apart when they could form the best alliangce, since the two peoples should, in a place the size of Rhode Island, meet each other and not leave the process to the leaders, who are either full of rage or incompetent. I may not have answered your particular points, but always, this failure which can lead to so many more failures, breaks me into such profoud sad regret. We cannot fix what is asunder. But we CAN fix this profound mistrust by face to face meetings. I know that but what good does that do?
6) and last: Dear Mr. Rashid Khalani, you are in a position to make a difference in all the lives in these two entities. Countries or no, they are capable, most Israelis and most Palestinians of finding their distortions simply! by being allowed to meet each other, which is crazy because now they are not legally allowed to to do so. I think of the Palestinian greats like Faisal Husseini (RIP) and Sari Nusseibi and Mustafa Bargouti, and the brothers Kuttab and many more, should have been included, as some others are, in such dialogue.
Very last, as a Jewish American who made Aliyah years ago, I spent as have you, 15 years working non stop for peace. I never thought I'd give up. But all that time took it's toll on my health and my spirit. Now, I can't usually bear to read what's going on. The Israelis are fighting the Nazis, in some real fashion, and the Palestinians are refusing to be creative. Sorry state of affairs, and not the necessary outcome, right? wrong?