NYTimes as a Platform for Lies

In today's NYTimes (May 18, 2004), a letter to the editor appears.

Written by one Daanish Faruqi of Piscataway, N.J. (who does not appear in a phone book site I searched), it contains these lines:

Hats off to Thomas L. Friedman for realizing that Palestinian terrorism isn't simply a nihilistic rage. Rather, it is a response to outright theft of Palestinian land through settlements, which defy international law in the name of a prophetic commitment to a Greater Israel.

Some of the readers might be convinced by his logic but consider this: if Jewish "settlement" is theft and a reason for a rage (a euphemism for terror), why was there Arab terror before 1967? There were no "settlements" - and from now on, I will be using "communities" - prior to 1967, nor was there an "occupation" but the PLO was founded in 1964. And the PLO engaged in terror - bombings, shooting, etc. without Israel being in Judea and Samaria and Gaza. So, what was the reason for their nihilism then?

Could it be that all of Israel, or, rather, anywhere there is an "Israel" is "theft" and a reason for "rage"? And if Jewish history and a 3000 year old presence in the Land of Israel can be conveniently ignored, as if it is only a "prophetic commitment", and we don't really need God to prove Jewish residency in this land, what do we do Muhammed's nighttime flight on a winged horse from Saudi Arabia to Jerusalem? That isn't "prophetic"? That doesn't contain an element of religion or for the atheists out there, a bit of the stretch of the imagination?

And his conclusion?

Hence, it is impossible to subdue global Islamism without first dealing with the question of Palestine. And the first step in doing so is to demolish Israel's settlements.

Nice guy. Demolish. Not dismantle. Not save the homes for the "poor refugees". No, he's got to smash and obliterate and demolish.

Or maybe he just went into one of those nihilistic rages?