Letter: Naive attempts at peace
From the minute I picked up Sam Bagg’s column of April 10 (“The only peace”), I knew something was wrong. In the pit of my stomach I knew I didn’t like the direction of Bagg’s reasoning, and yet I found each of his points apparently incontestable. He indicts the culture of victimization and is right to do so. There is nothing more disgusting to my palette then two peoples scrambling to be seen as the ultimate victim in front of the court of world opinion.
He very prudently notes that no amount of huffing and puffing in the United States will change the facts on the ground. Anyone...
I'm disheartened that Mr. Abolafia has been so disillusioned by the fear-mongering of the anti-reconciliation right. Perhaps someday he can be convinced, but if people with his degree of faith in his fellow man continue to hold the reins of power, I'm not confident we CAN see a world that looks any different.
Mr. Abolafia, please stay out of politics.
"He very prudently notes that no amount of huffing and puffing in the United States will change the facts on the ground. Anyone who has spent more than a fortnight in the Levant knows that to be the case. "
I have spent many years in the Levant and I have seen many Jews, Muslims, and Christians work with each other, and I have seen thousands more walk past each other not wishing each other any harm.
The notion that the crisis is due to people hating each other, not due to political reality is false, and is popular with people for whom Arabs are non-human and irrational.
I realize that this may seem to some like unjustifiably blaming the other side, but consider this: the rights of 10 million Palestinians have been canceled. 5 million refugees, 3 million living under occupation, and 1.5 living in Israel as 4th class citizens after European Jewry, Eastern Jewry, and African Jewry.
Maybe this is a problem.
And maybe before people through their hands up and say that the barbarians will just keep fighting each other, they should be part of solving the problem: the cancelation of the rights of ten million people.