Re: Jonathan Cook’s Commentary, August 31, ‏2004

Dear Sir or Madam,

I cannot begin to express my anger at the commentary published in your paper, signed by Jonathan Cook, which rallied Palestinians to go out and kill innocent Israelis. A similar piece regarding any other conflict in the world would have no doubt been thrown out of the paper as inhuman, but when it comes to Israel, everything is fair game, according to your paper.
I am a member of the Israeli left. I supported Oslo when Israel tried to reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians. I remember how our hopes were shattered when in response to our attempts, we received a devastating and unprecedented series of terrorist attacks. But we plodded on, believing the terrorists are the enemies of peace, and we must do battle with them by continuing on the Oslo path. But in every turn we received nothing but hatred from the Palestinians.
Eventually, we gave up. It is clear to many of us today that the (justified) hatred of the Palestinians to us will not go away anytime soon. That is why we have come up with another plan: separation. The barrier is meant as a temporary way to separate these two warring peoples, to let the hatred of the Palestinians subside. The fence is not meant to last forever – we of the Israeli left believe that when the Palestinians are ready, it can be dismantled and the two people will live in peace together. That is not the situation now (thanks, by the way, to people like Mr. Cook).
Prime Minister Sharon has taken up this plan of the left-wing in Israel. True – the original plans had problems, and even after our supreme court’s decision to alter it in some places and keep it closer to the green line, still not all sides can be content. But the facts are obvious: where there is a wall, there is no terror. Only this Tuesday we discovered how plainly true this equation is, when terror struck in Beer-Sheva, a city yet unprotected by the security fence.
But the plan does not end with the building of the fence. The disengagement plan includes removing all Jewish settlements from the midst of the Palestinian population, to further limit the sore contact between Israelis and Palestinians.

But Mr. Cook is not satisfied. The headlines the plan is making in Israel are not enough for him. He wants blood splattered all over the world’s newspapers’ front pages. Mr. Cook, according to your paper, is “a journalist living in Israel”, but you couldn’t tell that from his column. “Israelis,” he writes, “have rejected the legitimacy of all forms of Palestinian resistance”. This is nothing but a lie. Israelis have rejected nothing but the heinous atrocities carried out against them daily. Mr. Cook talks of a “lull” in the Palestinian violence which has presumably not brought forth any such lull in the violence of the IDF against them, but he is ignoring the continuing attempts by Palestinian terrorists to carry out such acts of violence – attempts luckily foiled by the Israeli forces – until this Tuesday. He is ignoring the disgusting use Palestinian terrorists are making of the crossing-point between the occupied territories and Israel – the source of income for thousands of Palestinians wishing to come into Israel to work. These terrorists don’t mind blowing themselves up there, thus stopping the entrance of innocent Palestinians into Israel. They don’t mind posing as sick people to get past security so they can kill Israelis – thus dulling the compassion of the soldiers working at the passes.

Israel has been attempting to reach a peace agreement – or at least a cease-fire – with the Palestinians for years now, long before the current Intifada started (reminder: it started because Arafat wasn’t satisfied with the 90% of the territories Barak offered him. Instead of just continuing the talks, he started a bloody war). It’s been a long time since the violence of Palestinians has served any purpose but to keep a settlement at bay. Even if the first Intifada was justified, as a means to coerce Israel to the negotiations table, it has been nothing short of a crime against humanity since the Oslo agreements were signed, and doubly so since this current Intifada started, in the wake of the Barak-Arafat talks in Camp David.

It is disgusting to me that a paper such as yours can allow this biased journalist to continue reporting on the conflict here. If you had any ethical credibility, you would have replaced him for someone who doesn’t show such enthusiasm for acts of murderous terror against innocent people.
I for one am going to campaign among anyone who would listen against your paper and against Mr. Cook’s continued employment in this region, pending an apology to the citizens of Israel.

Sincerely,
Dubi Kanengisser
Jerusalem, Israel

Dear Sir or Madam,

I am a member of the Israeli left.

the first Intifada was justified