Monday, December 10, 2012

Hallucinations


The Torrington Register Citizen allows readers to post opinions anonymously in a feature called "Soundoff." This provides a service in allowing readers to express views that are unpopular, but it is also subject to abuse. Anti-Israel fanatics have used "Soundoff" as a vehicle for spreading their hatred with venomous attacks generally laced with lies. One such screed was published on December 8, 2012. That screed is included here, followed by a letter submitted in response.

Soundoff

In response to "..it's clear that Israelis want nothing more than to live their lives in peace." Sound-off, Dec. 4. Really, that's all that they "want?" How about their plans to build thousands of new homes in West Bank "settlements" (aka land grabs? Don't they want those? How about the "Apartheid Wall?" How about the hundreds of nuclear bombs Israel possesses (while disallowing inspectors to examine, and refusing to sign nuclear non-proliferation treaties...something that Iran has already done a long time ago, by the way ). How about the two lines on the Israeli flag, flanking their symbol, that signify the Tigris and Euphrates rivers...their penultimate boundary goal? The Israelis want all of that, and lots more! The last thing that the Israeli government and many Israeli citizens want, is peace. Their actions and history are proof of that! Their most recent provocation, in which they bombed and incinerated a Hamas leader, touching off the Palestinians' determined but feeble bottle rocket response, is just more evidence of unbridled Israeli aggression. Peace? You must be hallucinating!

The Response

To the editor:

To partially respond to the cowardly hate-monger who repeatedly hides behind and misuses the anonymity of "Soundoff" to launch his error-filled diatribes against America's only real friend in the Middle East:

The Israeli flag has blue lines because its design was based on the tallit, the Jewish prayer shawl; the absurd claim that they represent the Tigris and Euphrates would be laughable if it has not been used to incite so much violence and hatred already.

If those two rivers were Israel's "penultimate boundary goal," then that democracy is certainly going about achieving that aim in a very strange way. It gave the massive Sinai back to Egypt. That area is now being used to smuggle large quantities of massive Iranian rockets to the terrorists in Gaza, rockets the anonymous writer refers to as "bottle rockets." It gave all of Gaza to the Palestinian Authority, has already given about 40 percent of Judea and Samaria (aka the "West Bank") to the PA and has offered virtually all of the rest.

Thousands of those "bottle rockets" were launched at Israeli civilians - a war crime under international law - before what the anonymous writer refers to as Israel's "most recent provocation." As they say, the hostilities started when Israel began to fight back.

Recently, the Hamas Politburo Chief Khaled Mashaal gave a well-publicized interview to CNN's Christiane Amanpour. He was praised as becoming more moderate when, out of one side of his mouth hs said "I accept a Palestinian state according to 1967 borders with Jerusalem as the capital ..."

But even more recently, speaking in Gaza at a rally commemorating the 25th anniversary of the founding of Hamas, he spoke out of the other side of his mouth: "Palestine is ours from the river to the sea and from the south to the north. There will be no concession on an inch of the land. … We will never recognize the legitimacy of the Israeli occupation and therefore there is no legitimacy for Israel, no matter how long it will take. … Jihad and the armed resistance is the only true path to liberation."

This is the nature of Israel's genocidal adversaries. The anonymous Soundoff writer, like so many anti-Zionist propagandists, falsely accused Israel of precisely what the Palestinian Arabs are trying to do.

Israelis want peace. Israelis dream of peace, Unfortunately, it takes two to tango. Until the Palestinian Arabs give up their dream of destroying Israel, those dreams of peace will remain a fantasy.

Sincerely,

Alan Stein, Ph.D.
President Emeritus, PRIMER-Connecticut

No comments: