Madison Rafah Journal

Kathy Walsh, The Capital Times, April 19, 2006

Dear Editor:

Letter writer Chad Goldberg (April 13) presents a criticism of Hamas based on selected quotations by Hamas officials. There are many other sources (also mostly in Arabic sources, as well as some British and even Israeli sources) that offer other quotes and an entirely different analysis. However, instead of arguing over which sources are more correct, I would like to bring your attention to the other side of the conflict.

Israeli historian Benny Morris wrote a rather honest version of Israeli history ("Righteous Victims," 2001). He presents the horrible things done by the Israeli military and civilians as well as by the Palestinians. He quotes Ben-Gurion's diary and other documents that show that Israel's intentions have always been to create a Jewish state on as much of mandated Palestine, and even beyond, as possible. And then, in an interview in 2004, Morris said that is fine, Israel is worth it. It is a superior civilization. Just as the American holocaust of the American Indians was justifiable in his eyes. His only regret is that Israel didn't finish the job. Racist and horrible. At least he is honest about it.

In recent guest columns in The Capital Times, Rabbi Jonathon Biatch (March 24) and Steve Morrison (March 21) present one-sided truths. They will not acknowledge Israeli terrorism, Israeli ethnic cleansing, or the many instances Israel has chosen not to comply with the Fourth Geneva Conventions. (Under the Geneva Conventions, the Oslo agreements are illegal.) They ignore how Benjamin Netanyahu violated the spirit if not the letter of Oslo, and then blame the Palestinians for not upholding the agreement. They ignore how Israel will only negotiate with certain Palestinians under certain conditions, and then blame the Palestinians for not being willing to negotiate.

They make it look like Israel is the victim and the only victim, ignoring the vastly larger numbers of Palestinian than Israeli victims. They do not present a true image of the situation but create a distorted reality. But that is Israel's strategy. Create reality on the ground, build colonies in the occupied territory, call them "settlements" or even "suburbs," then offer to give back a small portion as a great concession. And that for the purpose of solving Israel's "demographic problem," i.e., maintaining a Jewish majority in as large a state as they can get. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said as much.

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The New York Times
April 19, 2006
Op-Ed Contributor
By TONY JUDT

IN its March 23rd issue the London Review of Books, a respected British journal, published an essay titled "The Israel Lobby." The authors are two distinguished American academics (Stephen Walt of Harvard and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago) who posted a longer (83-page) version of their text on the Web site of Harvard's Kennedy School.

As they must have anticipated, the essay has run into a firestorm of vituperation and refutation. Critics have charged that their scholarship is shoddy and that their claims are, in the words of the columnist Christopher Hitchens, "slightly but unmistakably smelly." The smell in question, of course, is that of anti-Semitism.

This somewhat hysterical response is regrettable. In spite of its provocative title, the essay draws on a wide variety of standard sources and is mostly uncontentious. But it makes two distinct and important claims. The first is that uncritical support for Israel across the decades has not served America's best interests. This is an assertion that can be debated on its merits. The authors' second claim is more controversial: American foreign policy choices, they write, have for years been distorted by one domestic pressure group, the "Israel Lobby."

Some would prefer, when explaining American actions overseas, to point a finger at the domestic "energy lobby." Others might blame the influence of Wilsonian idealism, or imperial practices left over from the cold war. But that a powerful Israel lobby exists could hardly be denied by anyone who knows how Washington works. Its core is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, its penumbra a variety of national Jewish organizations.

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Melanie Conklin, The Wisconsin State Journal, April 18, 2006

Ald. Lauren Cnare doesn't oppose buying milk for kids in Rafah on the Gaza Strip in Palestine. She just objects to tax money given to a Madison sister city in El Salvador being used that way.

Cnare sits on the Sister Cities Grant Review subcommittee, which during the grant review process found that the Arcatao, El Salvador, sister city program gave some of its money to the controversial Rafah Sister City project — looking like an end run around the City Council, which in 2004 voted against making Rafah a sister city. (Opponents raised heated objections, saying it appeared to be taking sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.)

"It's not that the kids don't deserve milk or money, they do," says Cnare. "While these are worthwhile causes, we as a city need to be good stewards of our money and make sure these programs are following the guidelines." The Arcatao sister city group had not returned calls by press time.

Copyright (c) 2006, The Wisconsin State Journal

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