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Read other letters about this article
Raul, what does your personal experience tell us? I went to Israel in 1969 and in 1970 shortly after the six-day war in 1967. Already then, the reaction of ordinary people was more or less the same.
God may have chosen the Jewish people but as the Bible and history tells us the chosen people was neither better nor wiser than other people. But neither was it worse or more cunning as too many of my countrymen murderously believed only a few decades ago.
I still remember the “gook” talk during Vietnam, and I forgot what the GIs are referring to Iraqis now-a-days, but it’s no better: War dehumanizes people in such a way as to induce them to dehumanize the enemy. War is raging in the Middle East for more than seven decades now, and ever since has been corroding humanity and moral values.
The important message of Gary Kamiya’s article is that a responsible government, any responsible political actor should take the unintended consequences – among those the above - into account when taking war decisions. The unwillingness to learn history’s lessons then is not only a sign of incompetence or simple stupidity, it has its moral ramifications.
And to all those people raging about supposed anti-semitism by Gary: (1) Arabs are semites, too. (2) Not asking Israelis to adhere to common moral standards is implicitly debasing the Jewish people. (3) With public opinion in the U.S. overwhelmingly in favour of Israel, it is pointless to repeat incessantly that Hamas’s moral failures are by far bigger.
The tragic outset of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – two peoples promised the same land – does not allow moral condemnations trumping peace efforts: As long as each side sees itself as the victim – and therefore morally superior – and is accounting up the "by far superior wrongs" of the other side to a "few regrettable collateral damages" inflicted by the own side, there will be no peace. After all, it took former Irgun terrorist Menachem Begin to sign the peace agreement with Sadat. Should Sadat have continued to reject Begin because he had been the leader of Irgun who bombed the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in the fight gainst those stalwarts of Western civilization, the British? Thus, it might very well be that Hamas leader in exile Khaleed Mashaal will be the guy to sign the peace agreement with Israel.
And to come back to your personal experience, Raul, of course Mashaal feels the same way and far worse towards Jewish people as you observed Israelis towards Palestinians.
