'Failings' in the Mideast
'Failings' in the Mideast
LETTERS
David Barish, president, American Jewish Committee, Houston Chapter
Hatred is incited
The Chronicle's editorial Sunday on the Middle East talks of twin failings as if both sides in the conflict have equal responsibility. (Please see "Twin failings / Neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians are following President Bush's road map to peace.") Yet, the Chronicle's statement that Israeli settlement policy may be the cause for why eight young Israelis were massacred only gives hope to future terrorists that it is OK to kill in response to a policy. Settlement policies do not kill. Incitement to hatred does.
While Mahmoud Abbas may have denounced the massacre in English, the next day the newspaper he controls pictured the terrorist as a Shahid (martyr) on the front page in Arabic. This we call incitement.
Offers to give Palestinians 97 percent of the West Bank, part of Jerusalem, and even a return of some refugees, were rejected during the Clinton administration by the Palestinians. The result was a war of terrorism and the intifada. Israel withdrew its settlements and forces from all of Gaza in 2005, yet more than 7,000 rockets have fallen on Israeli cities since the unilateral withdrawal.
The American Jewish Committee has long been committed to a peaceful settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, maintaining such a settlement can only be achieved when there is a Palestinian leadership committed to a negotiated solution and to the renunciation of terrorism and incitement to hatred.
DAVID BARISH
president, American Jewish Committee, Houston Chapter Date: 3/18/2008
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