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• Monday, January 5, 2009 07:39 PM

  @ dick dworkin -- I don't know what happens.

  I don't know if Israel can reverse all of the young people who, born Israeli, decide to live elsewhere.... IMHO, that's worse than the "population bomb" ...

  I'm willing to let demographic "reality" intervene... I don't know if Israel will outlive my life time (I'm 57 and not Jewish, fwiw). I'm resentful when it is implied that I should chose a side to "root" for and I wish that those who would use "our" foreign aid to Israel would work within "OUR" system to either deny funding or attach strings.

  I agree with others who have mentioned Egypt who also receives substantial aid (gosh, how glad we were to get them back in the western "capitalist" fold) but who -- as seen in the last Egyptian elections -- largely, if not completely fouted our "strings" and "pro-democracy" codicils.

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  I used to have problems with the "never negotiate with terrorist" stance of both Israel and the United States ...

  Discovering - After Reagan -- the Iran/Contra hypocracy of that fallacial "doctrine" at least on "our" part has left me muddled. As I said on 09/11, it all depends on who is holding the dictionary, however, Hamas is in the unenviable position of trying to be two things at one -- head of state and terrorist (I believe this is a self-description)/ vanguard (again as self-definition).

  Regardless, I am disturbed by the avid, indiscriminate "championing" of Hamas as somehow either a "legitimately democratically elected government" (a legitimacy they largely lost, imho, in their post-election harrassment of Fatah) or, again somehow the "vanguard of Palestinian liberation (in unfortunate contest with all the other, unencumbered by actual responsibility, more militant groups) by American liberals who, aside from 09/11 (and perhaps the previous WTC attack) have never experienced on-our-soil, threatening-my-family terrorism (or even act-of-war military attack).

  My best alternative outcome/guess/fantasy is that Egypt and Jordan and Lebanon are persuaded and likely financially incentivized (bought off) -- their own economies being twitchy -- (by the Saudis and possibly, in time, Iran) to in turn incentivize "assimilation" ...

  The hostilities must cease before restitution can be made.

  Perhaps, peace will be possible after restitution, however, the restitution is not Israel's alone.

  It can be done. I do not know what "Israel" will look like there after or what it will be named.

  —susan sunflower Read susan sunflower's other letters
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