Saturday, July 22, 2006; A16
Richard Cohen ["Hunker Down With History," op-ed, July 18] wrote that Israel, which he describes as "a nation of European Jews in an area of Arab Muslims," is "a mistake." This, he explains, is because the country faces hostility from the jihadists of the world.
If Mr. Cohen believes the liberation of the Jewish people from a history of oppression is a mistake because anti-Semitic movements such as Hamas and Hezbollah object to Israel's existence, would he also have thought the emancipation of slaves in the United States was a mistake because white supremacists in the Jim Crow South objected to their freedom?
Like other Israeli citizens, members of my (non-European) family do not believe their existence as Israelis is a mistake. As Iraqi Jews, they have been living in the Middle East since before the rise of Islam and the Arab conquest of the region. But as minorities in Iraq, they were second-class citizens; their rights were granted and removed based on the whims of their leaders, and they were forced to endure frequent anti-Jewish riots.
Only when they came as refugees to Israel, their
ancestral homeland, could they finally determine their own future with freedom and equality.
GILEAD INI
Senior Research Analyst
Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America
Boston
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What in the world was Richard Cohen thinking? It has never been more important to encourage the moderates and stand against the extremists in the Middle East, and he is giving fodder to the most extreme elements in the Arab world.
Contrary to what Mr. Cohen said, Israel is not a mistake, nor is it an implant. It is the fulfillment of the Jewish people's unbroken connection to the land of
Israel that kept Jews alive and together through 2,000 years of exile. The fact that for too long the Arab world rejected this legitimate right of the Jewish
people, even after Israel's acceptance of a Palestinian state, is the Arab world's problem, but it is hardly a reason to question the wisdom or right of Israel to
exist.
What is particularly strange about Mr. Cohen writing this now is that significant parts of the Arab world -- including Egypt, Jordan, some of the Persian Gulf states and North African countries -- either have treaties with Israel or have come to accept Israel's existence. This is a time when it is not Israel's legitimacy that should be challenged but the threat, through terrorism and hatred, that Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria and Iran pose not only to Israel but to the entire civilized world.
DAVID C. FRIEDMAN
Regional Director
Anti-Defamation League
Washington
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I am heartened to read that Richard Cohen believes the foundation of the state of Israel in Palestine to be a mistake. Most recognize, rightly, that calls for Israel to be wiped off the map are reprehensible and anachronistic. But once we understand Israel as a mistake, does it not follow that the population inconvenienced by its foundation is due some sort of recompense for what is, in essence, an instance of geopolitical negligence?
Indeed, to suggest that none can be held culpable for this mistake is to elide the history of the Palestinian question. In the Balfour Declaration, as Arthur Koestler wrote, "one nation solemnly promised to a second nation the country of a third." It is most generous of Mr. Cohen to declare the British entirely innocent in the adjudication of their own strategic colonial interests despite the disastrous results.
No restitution can now be offered to the Palestinian people by the declaration's authors short of a newly carved homeland. Support for a viable Palestinian state, secure and contiguous alongside Israel, remains chimeric. Mr. Cohen comments that much of the Islamic world is recalcitrant in making space for the Jews of Europe; who, I wonder, is to make space for the Arabs of Palestine?
MIKE EVANS
London