Letters to the Editor
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We should thank god for all the Jewbashing
It distracts the leftists. Otherwise they'd be tramping about the streets yelling about something important. What do YOU think of this chickensalad and aren't those nasty zionists fit to be bombed?
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Actually, I think the author's point about "generational differences" is worth the "price of admission"...
and applies, likely, equally to the Palestinian youth who participated with such enthusiasm in the various militias and brigades (gangs) ... whose influence on the election, aside from their own numerical "baby boomlet", has not been explored. Arafat and Fatah kept a relatively tight rein on legitimate above-board "power" ... the citizenry's needs went unmet and the gangs filled the void. Is this then the second or third post-1967 generation? Is this a generation that considers their parents hopeless optimists??
I have no idea. In Israel, as here in the United States, the generation of-age for WWII is dying off ... do their grandchildren consider them and their parents also hopeless optimists ... as it sometimes seems that our young adults consider their elders ... ???
I have no idea.
There was a time I believe each and every "peace initiative" was deserving of "best wishes" and "good thoughts" -- for the children who deserved that the adults of their world keep tryihng ....
I suspect this round of negotiations is to help "legitimize" Abbas and the ruling coalition by the participation of all of the other countries -- as much, if not more, than anything else.
Giles Kepel has been saying for several years now that Al-Qaeda and the Taliban and religious fundamentalist extremists are in the process of losing support as they FAIL to secure any victory ... Hamas failed to maintain power (and imho behaved dreadfully). I am uncertain as to Hezbollah's level of power in Lebanon as compared to, say, pre-war. The Sunni of Iraq appear to be casting out the Salafi jihadi of Al-Qaeda in Iraq ...
And the number of countries represented at these talks is extraordinary ... and, imho, may represent a brave face towards versus an actual fading of fundamentalist power/ threat.
"Freedom" is of dubious value when life itself is threatened. See also, the Bush doctrine.
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Generations?
You mean the 4 generations of "Palestinians" who have lived in Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon and their grandparents never ever set foot in "Palestine"? Those generations? Because as a 2nd Generation American I demand entrance and reparations in Poland, Belarus, Italy and Ireland. Thanks. Feel free to leave at gunpoint and leave all your possessions where they were.
One would think the Saloniks being good socialists and neo Marxists would be able to frame this as a class warfare not generational. After all, if nothing else Arafat gutted the Palestinian middle class -most of them up and left after 2000 and the al Aqsa intifada (165,000 to the US alone in 2000-2003). And you really can't have good revolutionary cred unless you claim to be from the gutter or the upper upper classes, can you?
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I took the author's point to be that the "younger generation" of Israelis do not have the "bond"
that their parents had/have with the Palestinians ... the memory of past hopes of a settled peace, the regrets, the memory of what happened in 1967 that left masses of Palestinians in limbo ...
The younger generation, as presented, has little or no knowledge of "palestinians" except through the filter of the "media."
It's not the same thing.
See also, Michael Moore, Bowling for Columbine, on how most white americans experience minorities via their "news programs" ... it's amazing just how (de facto) segregated most cities I have lived in are ... It's not the same ...
America's "younger generation" (I'm never sure what age range this is supposed to refer to) similarly was pegged as conservative and aggressive ... until the war in Iraq began to piss them off ... and from what I've seen, the anger is "personal" and financial -- not "global" or "legal" or "moral" .... those those may be cited to back up an argument or two. Twenty years of peace and prosperity (for some people), Reagan and Clinton both, have left their mark. Compassion seems to have suffered here.
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Just to Mention
Israel exists because a buncha people fought a freakin' WAR to take the land from the few remaining non-Zionist landowners and their numerous tenants. At the same time, they beat back nation-state attacks from several sides and retained their territory.
So can everyone back off the whole "Israel has no claim to territory" notion? They fought a war!
The only thing the Zionists/Israelis did "wrong," relatively speaking, is they didn't kill all the...unfriendly...residents when they took the land.
That's why the USA gets a say, too. We were smart enough to kill all the Indians. (Not technically every single one, but close enough...reservations took care of many of the rest. This wasn't 300 years ago, either.)
As for the neighbors--by now, every nearby state has acknowledged Israel's existence, and most of them are actually tolerant, with the exception of the fundamentalists we tend to pay disproportionate attention to. Every practical leader in the Arab "accepts" that Israel isn't going to be dumped into the sea anytime soon. They've got nukes.
Maybe that's as good as it gets. Israel's looking at about even returns if they'd just round up and murder all the Palestinians as if they would create a new, fully-autonomous Palestine on the West Bank.
I personally think the catch is Israel can't afford to give up the water and that kinda overrides everything else.
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Stop pissing off everybody
"How does one negotiate with someone who wants you - and everyone who shares your culture - dead?"
I am terrified of my thoughts, of what is happening to me: I work my way through problems by researching, reading, spending hours in the best libraries I can find; listening to the best professors and scholars available to me.
The more I learn about Israel the longer the list become of the things that are hateful about Israel. I am afraid to go to lectures for fear the hate will escape my lips.
Why do Israelis lie about their motives and their actions? Do Israelis think we do not know they are lying? Do they not only lie but insult our intelligence?
Why do they steal and think it is permissible?
Why do Israelis assassinate, imprison, bulldoze, shell, bomb, threaten, economically strangle, bankrupt, they claim "You are an antisemite!"
You're damn right I am; I despise that you do these horrible things, and that my country is complicit in them.
Today I heard Shmuel Rosner blithely wave aside Israel's sustained practices of depriving Palestinians of water, electricity, food, commerce, passage, as mere "theories and moral considerations." Not practical considerations, spoke Rosner. We are engaged in the world of pragmatism, he said.
In what moral universe are we functioning? THIS IS MY COUNTRY you are dragging into hell, o Israel! I hate you for what you are doing to my soul and to my country.