Saturday, May 9, 2009

Not their place to even think about this stuff

May 8 Editorial (2)

To critique The Oklahoman's piece "Leaning on Israel won’t bring Middle East peace" would take far too much time and space. I would like to defer to a couple of interesting individuals, first Robert Fisk who has covered the Algerian Civil War, the Iranian Revolution, the American hostage crisis in Beirut , the Iran-Iraq War, the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, Israel’s invasions of Lebanon, the Gulf War, and the invasion and ongoing war in Iraq. He states quite simply "I don't think we Westerner's care about the Middle East."


Secondly, I showed the article to Norman Finkelstien who is an Author, Activist, and Son of a Mother who survived the Warsaw Ghetto, the Majdanek concentration camp as well as two slave labor camps, and a Father who lived through Auschwitz. Upon reading the Oklahoman's opinion, he merely replied in obvious disgust:

"Hamas has repeatedly stated that it's willing to
settle the conflict on the June 1967 border, which
is a lot more than ANY Israel government has agreed to."

Finkelstein in his work often points out that New York Times columnist Isabel Kershner refers to the illegal settlements as "developments", and it is worth noting that The Oklahoman doesn't even stoop to that level here. I mention this, becauase I feel it says a lot about the insanity of the whole situation.

But everything is not terrible and miserable with everyone hating eachother. Finkelstein runs an excellent piece by Professor David Shulman, of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem showing Palestinains and Israeli's working together for positive things. As he says, it is worth reading.





No comments:

Post a Comment