OP ED OF AN OPEN-MINDED KUWAIT

 

 

In response to the article on the following URL:

 

http://www.arabtimesonline.com/arabtimes/opinion/view.asp?msgID=1242

 

-or-

 

http://tinyurl.com/nnglz

 

I wrote the following to their newspaper:

 

To: Ahmed Al-Jarallah

Editor-in-Chief, the Arab Times

Kuwait

 

 Dear Editor:

 

 The understanding and balance that you evince in your Op Ed is singular. May there come to be many more like you.

 

 I speak for most Israelis when I say that every civilian casualty pains us. Having to execute war is odious to us.

 

 We are aware that the average Lebanese citizen is terrorized by Hizbullah and we understand that being part of large families sometimes innocents are put at risk or implicated by the act of one or a few members of the extended family.

 

 I have written extensively about the fact that both the Jews and the Palestinians were set up. I have explained that the Partition Plan of 1947 was intentionally designed to put the Jews and the Palestinians in conflict to the purpose of dividing the strength of both peoples and keeping the munitions market going. Looking at the map of the Partition Plan, we see clearly that by dividing the area into mutually trisecting countries that each of our Peoples were, ostensibly, supposed to live in; the conditions of war were cynically made inevitable.

 

 We are not one another's enemy. Jews and Arabs have lived in prosperity and creativity together since the Middle Ages. Many communications that I have received from Arabs in numerous countries over the years tell me that they, like me, wish this would be again for our mutual benefit.

 

 Members of the old Jewish families in the country tell me that the problems with the Arabs began with the British Mandate. The British set us on edge one against the other for their own purposes.

 

 Our mutual enemies are those who deal in the death industries.

 

 Too few in the Arab world and in Israel realize this. As more and more people in this region come to realize how we have been played with, as with pawns, how our lives have been considered valueless by the super-rich; we will, more and more, come to consider the possibilities of ending this conflict and living in cooperation.

 

 Those of us in this region who love peace and treasure civilization would be wise to join hands to the purpose of expelling our true mutual enemies - those who, as you say, are luxuriating in opulence at the expense of our peoples being subjected to war.

 

 Thank you for voicing your wise and balanced opinion. It gives me great strength to know that there are people in the Arab world who recognize that we are both being used and manipulated.

 

 If you find it worthy, you are free to reprint this communication, as is.

 

 Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat (Safed), Israel