03-14-04

1. We want peace for our Israeli friends.
   
   Congress and all presidents since Harry Truman have made it abundantly clear that the United States cares about the welfare of the people of Israel. It makes no sense to allow the costly struggle between Israelis and Arabs to drag on indefinitely. Year after year, the American taxpayers pour billions of dollars into a heart-breaking feud between two peoples that used to live side by side in peace for centuries.
   
   As the principal guarantor of the State of Israel, we Americans have a moral obligation to give peace in the Holy Land a chance and use our dominant influence on the Israeli government to end the brutal occupation of the Palestinian territories. Friends ought to help friends who go wrong and lose their sense of justice.
   
   It is the Sharon government that oppresses the Palestinians who simply do what any tormented people would do: They fight back. For our Israeli friends sake, the suicide bombing by Muslim resistance fighters must end. It is unlikely to cease, however, if the Sharon regime continues to assassinate suspects and bulldoze their homes.
   
   Hundreds of thousands of highly educated Israelis oppose the intransigence of their radical leaders who prolong the agony because they hope to drive all Palestinians out of their homeland, somehow, some time. Read the Torah and the admonitions of the great rabbis, and you will learn how much the destruction of people and property violates Jewish ethics!
   
   The Bush administration has failed miserably to use its vast powers to end Sharon's occupation regime. The "road map" to peace led nowhere because the President never seriously tried to pursue the plan he proposed.
   
   
2. We want an end to anti-Arab bigotry.
   
   My views about Muslims in general and Arabs in particular are partly based upon nine study tours of Muslim societies, six of them in the Arab world. Over the past 30 years I have also had the benefit of numerous conferences and dialogues with Americans specializing on Muslim and Arab culture.
   
   I very well know the deep differences between Arab and American culture, ideologically, politically, economically, and socially; and I have no illusions about the festering problems besetting Arab societies. Many Americans, including Mr. Dart, however, need to visit and study the Arab world before they make ill-informed and damaging generalizations about them.
   
   I have never heard Arabs say they hated Americans as people. Thousands of Arabs owe their higher education to American schools. Thousands have relatives here. Very often, however, have I heard the same angry laments about Americans blatantly biased against Arabs. Over and over Arabs ask: Do the Palestinians not have a right to their own state free from Israeli occupation and control?
   
   Arab governments differ greatly from each other. Many hold elections and give the people a voice in public affairs. Throughout the region, even in much maligned Saudi Arabia, liberalization movements are growing. For Western governments to interfere in the domestic affairs of Muslim societies is prone to provoke indignation and resistance.
   
   The longer we finance and excuse the Israeli occupation, and the more we try to impose our designs on Muslim countries, the more the lunatic terrorist fringe will gain converts against us. Terrorism is unlikely to be eradicated by military means alone. We must fight it most of all by changing the unfair policies that do not reflect our American values.
   
   Dear Mr. Dart: As one of your successors on the editorial board of the Journal-Courier, I can assure you that the "anti-Israel league" is only a figment of your vivid imagination. The very opposite is true: We are patriotic Americans with a very strong sense of liberty and justice--for all of God's children.