Stop Terror - Keep The Territories

I came up with that slogan after reading a letter of Isi Liebler in the NYTimes today, along with some others, arguing with Roger Cohen's continued outrageous views:

Re “Middle East Reality Check” (column, The New York Times on the Web, March 9):


To the Editor:

Roger Cohen condemns Israel, whose responses to “sporadic Hamas rockets” make him feel “shamed.”

I wonder what Mr. Cohen would expect of his government if over the past eight years thousands of “sporadic” rockets and mortar bombs had been targeted at his city and his neighbors had become traumatized by sirens and running in and out of shelters.

Mr. Cohen urges the Obama administration to become more forthcoming with Hamas, which “won the free and fair January 2006 elections,” and with Hezbollah, which Mr. Cohen quotes a British Foreign Office spokesman as saying is “part and parcel of the national fabric in Lebanon.”

Remember, the Nazis were democratically elected and became “part and parcel” of the German national fabric.

The Israelis withdrew unilaterally from Gaza, which enabled terrorists to use the territories they had gained to launch missiles deeper into Israeli territory. I would challenge Mr. Cohen to identify one single instance in which diplomatic outreach to jihadists led to peace rather than emboldening them.

Isi Leibler
Jerusalem


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Roger Cohen is in a hurry to make peace in the Middle East. His impatience is typically American, will typically be unsuccessful and is out of sync with the slower long-term strategies of both Israel and Hamas.

Mr. Cohen is correct that Israel is not rushing to make peace with Hamas, but that is different than saying that “it’s also possible that Israel in reality has no desire to see a Palestinian state,” or that it is seeking to “perpetuate the conflict.”

Multiple Israeli governments have already accepted the idea of a neighboring Palestinian state. Israel is delaying in the hopes that eventually Hamas will disappear and that what will remain will be a reasonable and constructive Palestinian negotiating partner. Hamas’s long-term hope is that Israel itself will eventually disappear.

Edieal Pinker
New Haven

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To the Editor:

If there are any “wondrous political odysseys” going in analyzing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it is surely Roger Cohen’s wishful thinking regarding Hamas.

In arguing that the United States should negotiate with Hamas despite Hamas’s continuing refusal to accept Israel’s existence, Mr. Cohen paints Israel’s actions only in the harshest of lights, while giving Hamas every conceivable benefit of the doubt, and then some.

Thus, beyond noting that the Hamas charter, which explicitly calls for the murder of Jews, is “vile,” he says nothing, except that it dates from 1988. As for Hamas’s continuing calls for the destruction of Israel, Mr. Cohen says “perhaps” Hamas really means it and quickly turns the discussion to whether Israel really favors a two-state solution, thus seeming to equate Israel with Hamas.

As for Hamas’s reign of terror against Israeli civilians and its sacrifice of its own people, there is no mention of that.

If Mr. Cohen wants to call for direct discussions with Hamas, he should do so on the basis of the world as it exists, not as he wishes it would be.

David Bressman
Englewood, N.J.