Letters

From the April 2005 issue

(Page 2 of 3)

I was not amused at Paul Sperry's cheap attack on government employees who get cheap college degrees. Sperry offered no evidence that these employees are unqualified to do their jobs--merely that they didn't suffer through an endless institutional program to get their license to work. Since when do "free minds and free markets" require anybody to get a license to work?

I'm a computer specialist with 30 years of experience, starting in my teens. I was too busy programming, starting successful computer companies, and relaxing to waste four or six or eight years going to college. Is reason suggesting that, as a result, I wouldn't be qualified to be chief information officer of a government department? It might well be that such a job has a bullshit requirement that applicants have a "degree." As an otherwise-qualified candidate, what would be wrong with my getting the cheapest and easiest degree possible?

John Gilmore
San Francisco, CA

Imperial Waltz

My pleasure in reading Michael Young's "Imperial Waltz" (January) was considerably diminished when I got to the middle of his piece, where I felt that he deviated from his posture of objectivity when he arrived at the Israel-Palestinian issue. There are four paragraphs, starting with the one where he accuses Richard Perle and David Frum of allowing "their pro-Israel prejudices to get the better of their judgment." I don't know if that is true or not; I haven't read their book. But one wonders from the next few paragraphs if it isn't Young whose prejudices have gotten the better of his judgement.

I don't why the Palestinians are "the elephant in the living room of those who argue that U.S. influence in Iraq can help spread Middle Eastern liberalism." First, let's remember that the Palestinians sided with Saddam Hussein when he invaded Kuwait (resulting in the wholesale expulsion of Palestinians from Kuwait after the war) and during the recent war, in addition to dancing in the streets after September 11th. Mightn't reducing the influence of terrorist-supporting despots have a salutary effect on the area, specifically on the Palestinians?

Young then tells us that these frothing at the mouth neocons are siding with "the worst on Israel's far right" when they "write that in the Arab and Muslim world 'the Palestinian issue has never been about compassion, mercy, or even justice. First and always, the issue has been about vengeance.'" To which Young responds: "This belief is not only untrue; it suggests that force alone can resolve the Palestinian problem."

How does this assertion suggest that force alone can resolve the problem? Just because Frum and Perle argue that the Palestinian people have been hijacked and used to advance a cause that has very little to do with their needs? The Arabs have kept the Palestinians in refugee camps; Arabs held the territory they now say belongs to a Palestinian state for twenty years.

Next, Young charges Israel with annexing Palestinian territory. Of course, this territory doesn't exist yet, but it might--and would have already if the average Israeli wasn't so afraid of being blown up. Then he takes umbrage at the suggestion that some Palestinian refugees might settle in the countries where they have been living for the last 50 years.

Then he goes over the line: "Swallowing disappointment is hardly a compelling cure for Palestinian-Israeli hostility, especially when Palestinians are a generation away from being a demographic majority between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River. Moreover, the resettlement of Palestinian refugees in Arab countries is a sore point in a region where the perception is that Israel rests on a foundation of ethnic cleansing." Ethnic cleansing? Of course, Young doesn't believe that, but there is a "perception." The demographic argument is a favorite of clever rejectionists, who feel that the eventual Arab majority further illustrates Israel's illegitimacy.

But a quarter of Israeli citizens are Arabs, and almost all the Jews were thrown out of the Arab countries where they had lived for generations and had their property taken. Arafat was quite clear while trying to flood Israel with millions of "refugees," most of whom have never been in Israel, that Palestine would be Judenrein--not one Jew could remain in "Palestine." The implicit allegation of ethnic cleansing is offensive and it should not have been in the review. If it represents the opinion of the author, he should have had the courage to come out and say it.��

�������

Richard Blumenstein
Bingham Farms, MI

Michael Young replies: Why are the Palestinians "the elephant in the living room of those who argue that U.S. influence in Iraq can help spread Middle Eastern liberalism"? Because, as I wrote, "what is good for the Iraqis must be good for the Palestinians." Just as Iraqis were entitled to see their dictatorial regime removed so they could enjoy autonomous self-determination, so too Palestinians merit an end to an Israeli occupation that, regardless of their own myriad mistakes, has denied them self-determination for decades. The Palestinian issue, for better or worse, remains very much an obstacle preventing the region from taking U.S. democratization efforts in Iraq seriously. I've regretted this bitterly in the past, but the pervasiveness of the view is undeniable.

How does Perle's and Frum's assumption that the Palestinian issue has always "been about vengeance" imply that only force (or the effectively forcible resettlement of Palestinians elsewhere) can resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict? Simply, because if your adversary is interested only in vengeance, then peace based on compromise is not an option.

Comments

nfl jerseys|11.8.10 @ 12:31AM|#

jdrr

log in or register to reply