The blame lies entirely with Arafat

Letters

Editor: We would like to take this opportunity to respond to Svend Robinson's article in the June 21, 2002, edition of your paper.

Dear Mr. Robinson:

You may well have lost friendships in the Jewish community over your naïve and blinkered acceptance of Palestinian rhetoric, but one thing you do seem to have learned from those friendships is the meaning of chutzpah. We well remember the report that you gave to our community after your return from the trip sponsored by the Canada-Israel Committee [in the mid-1980s]. You could not find one good word to say about Israel, even though you claim to have been "moved" by what you saw. If you were so moved, it was clearly not by the kibbutz movement, as you now claim. You spent virtually the entire speech berating Israel and, by extension, her supporters in the room. That is chutzpah, or maybe false memory syndrome.

The very language you use in your opening paragraph gives you away. The Israelis who have lost their loved ones "cry for revenge" and "call for expulsion of Yasser Arafat, building of new walls, annexing of Palestinian‚ lands" – all the negative images your admittedly eloquent imagination can concoct. The Palestinians, on the other hand, "search through the rubble of bulldozed homes" – poor "innocent" victims of those big Jewish bullies whose parents, children, siblings and lovers have just been blown to bits by the naïve youngsters the "desperate Palestinian families" have sent out to do their dirty work.

We realize that the world insists on calling these terrorists "suicide bombers." If you and others were as honest and caring as you claim to be, you would at least call them by their true designation, "homicide bombers," because murder is their only purpose. Better still, you would strongly condemn the Arab states and Chairman Arafat for doing what Jews taught the world to abandon 4,000 years ago, namely human sacrifice, when God stopped our patriarch Abraham from killing his son Isaac.

All those who support this horrific concept should be told by people like yourself that by teaching hate to their children and by sending huge sums of money to families whose children murder Jews, they are committing the worst acts of immorality known to human beings. Instead, you encourage them by your words of justification on the basis of their situation. You are right, their situation is terrible, not due to Israel, but due to the fact that they have a corrupt leader who has squandered huge sums of money and every opportunity to have peace. Your suggested two-state solution was virtually accomplished by former prime minister Ehud Barak, before Chairman Arafat rejected it and launched this latest intifada. And talk about naïveté – a Palestinian state that "ensures full equality" for gays and lesbians? It is to laugh.

In case you think we are wrong, we invite you to check some of the columns that former Canadian Ambassador to Israel Norman Spector has written in the Vancouver Sun, or those of Marcus Gee in the Globe and Mail. They have addressed many of the issues you have raised and pointed out that the blame can be laid entirely at Chairman Arafat's feet.

You state that more and more Jews are speaking out. We ask you why you want to ally yourself with the handful of Jews who, for whatever reasons including self-hatred, speak out against Israel? It is significant that you have to reach all the way to the United Kingdom for the hateful and inaccurate ramblings of an obscure Labor MP to make your point. The vast majority of this community supports Israel. Although we may have internal differences on the details of how the situation is being handled, we should not allow our concerns to be used as weapons against those who put their lives on the line every single day.

We would like to suggest that you sit down and learn about the horrendously difficult situation in the Middle East from some of the well-known and recognized experts who understand Israel's difficult position. If you did, one of the first things you would hear from them is that the basis of the problem is that it is unacceptable to Islamic Arabs that Jews have a tiny piece of land in the Islamic Arab world. If a two-state solution is ultimately to be achieved, and we believe that it should, the Palestinian leadership will have to sincerely overcome this flaw in their thinking. This land has always had a Jewish presence, notwithstanding the destruction of the Second Temple. Not Arafat, not homicidal bombers and not naïve Canadian politicians will ever change that.

Betty and Irving Nitkin
Vancouver

^TOP