JACOB HENDERSON
Kaohsiung
A more accurate picture
Fania Oz-Salzberger presents an analogy that is inaccurate and fails to view the big picture of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in her commentary (“If you were in Israel’s predicament, wouldn’t you do the same,” Jan. 8, page 8).
She does mention the “sad and complicated history” between the Israelis and the Palestinians, some holding Israeli citizenship and some in limbo, living under oppression in the Occupied Territories, and she also concedes that Israel bears “some of the blame.” However, she fails to elaborate on both the history and the blame attributable to Israel in the article. I consider her minimization of this Israeli blame and simplification of the current situation appalling, but not surprising. Perhaps I can paint you a more fitting picture of reality.
Imagine someone (European Jews) from outside of your neighborhood coming into your home, forcibly removing you (Palestinian Arabs) from it, and kicking you into the dog pen. He electrifies the wires surrounding the pen, making it impossible for you to leave. To your great surprise and chagrin, many of your neighbors and indeed the entire community at large turn a blind eye to this brutal treatment. Later, the intruder decides to block food and medicine deliveries into the dog pen. Your children are now suffering malnutrition, with no access to health care. In your great anger, you begin to lob stones towards the house, and some of them even succeed in breaking some windows. Your neighbor then takes out his M16 and shotgun, and begins to fire indiscriminately at you and your family.
I believe this is a better representation of the situation in Gaza. Let’s look at the death toll. In just over a week of carnage, more than 600 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, more than 25 percent of whom were civilian women and children. In eight years, a dozen Israelis have been killed by rockets and mortars fired from Gaza.
As a US citizen, I am dismayed that many of the weapons being used to massacre these Palestinians have been supplied by my country, which refuses to take a balanced approach to the conflict. Perhaps the US Congress is also an Occupied Territory?
To preempt accusations of anti-semitism or anti-Zionism, two extremely different phenomena, let me go on to say that I am a Zionist; I believe that Israel has a right to statehood, behind the 1967 borders (Green Line) with Jerusalem a divided city — East Jerusalem the capital of a viable Palestinian state and West Jerusalem controlled by Israel.
Name and address withheld
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