Who Needs The Couch?

A letter of mine that will not be published in the NYTimes:

In reaction to a proposed talking cure diplomacy for the Middle East, Patricia Litke Kauffman writes in her letter (March 6) that "A Palestinian boy who loses his father at the hands of an Israeli soldier feels as much pain and loss as a Jewish boy at seeing his father killed by a Nazi or an Israeli boy seeing his father killed by a Hamas terrorist".

That is patently false. Arab children have been fed a steady stream of antisemitic propaganda through official Palestinian Authority sponsored mass media, educational programming materials as well as social welfare summer camps and the like for the past 15 years. Moreover, unlike Judaism, their Islamic instruction includes the ideal of martyrdom.

This is the unfortunate reality needs to be overcome first before peace is even to be discussed.