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Below is a link to an essay which appeared in the July 19th Detroit News. In response to the essay of Jeannie Weiner, "Mideast Peace: A Matter of Choices" I would like to comment that although the essay passes muster on the matter of style and cuteness of idea, it is oblivious to the facts.
First of all, the television program in which her Israeli friends explained to her that it was a Hamas supporter haranging people against the Jews, is typical of what all Israelis are told to show their friends. Palestinian television is like all other tv--just soaps and movies. When the Friday sermon is broadcast, it may indeed have reference to "the Jews," but this is the common expression for "the Israelis" since they themselves have set up a discriminatory state said to be "for Jews only."
As for Jeannie Weiner's references to "choices" and "spreading hate among children," she should criticize the actual material devastation--not just sermons--which the state of Israel has perpetrated on it's neighbors--for example the massacre allowed while Israeli troops occupied Lebanon up to the outskirts of Beirut, Lebanon.
But the cutest--and most outrageous slander and spreading of misunderstanding comes when Jeannie Weiner says: "The choice of what is taught to Arab children is in the hands of the Palestinians and Israeli Arabs and with the Arab countries who are neighbors of Israel. As Americans, we know that it is possible to live among people of differing religious, political and ethnic beliefs. But this is only possible when tolerance and peacefulness are cherished and when adults demonstrate in word and deed that pluralism and coexistence are important goals. "
To imply that Israel--a state where no Palestinian, be he Muslim, Christian, "bedouin" or even Jewish, has any rights--is a tolerant state, and cherishes tolerance, "as in the US"--is ridiculous. Israel NEEDS a civil rights movement to become a state of religious tolerance like the other republics in the Middle East.
The Arab states have bent over backwards to exist with this anachromism--Israel--existing as a "European-Jews-only" state on the most fertile land, but Israel keeps hunting for pretext for agression because it is a state based on remaining a colonial settler state on other people's land.
Denis Hoppe
Denis Hoppe, along with a Palestinian businessman from Dearborn attempted to set up an English Language School in Gaza city in 1995, but was hampered from doing so because Israel would not issue work permits to educators seeking to remain longer than "3-months-as-tourists" in the territories given to the Palestinian Authority under the Oslo accords.
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