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Most citizens in the United States have a deeply ingrained admiration for our bright, courageous, industrious Israeli friends. The reasons are easy to see. In culture Israelis are much like ourselves, with European traditions and values. And they are so unlike the unsavory-looking spokespersons, from leader-Arafat down, who are often seen representing the Palestinian point of view in a manner that is ineffectual, sometimes to the point of absurdity. We have developed a visceral, reflex affinity for the Israeli kibbutz ideal: make-the-desert-blossom, and all that. These admirable qualities, ideals and accomplishments are real; they are there.

In the light of Israel's praiseworthy deeds and values, is not our support on a sound base? I believe America's historic, never-failing support for Israel is only partly justified, and then only with deep reservations, because Israel's success as a nation has been purchased at an immense cost, first for itself and the Palestinians, and now, since September 11, for the United States and for the whole world.....for you and me.

What cost am I talking about? I refer to fifty years of tragic dispossession, deprivation and suffering by the Palestinian people, about 4 million of them, whose plight is consistently ignored or marginalized in the American media. I refer to fifty years of extraordinary infusions of American taxpayers' dollars, your dollars and mine, as much as eleven billion dollars per year, to prop up the state of Israel and equip its military with American tanks and helicopters and guns; and this infusion still continues. I include the cumulative resentment and bitterness of many Palestinians, plus vehement hatred by the radical fringe, who, until 1947-48, felt nothing but friendship and admiration for the United States. To this I add the hostility of 100+ million Arab peoples, close neighbors and sympathizers with the Palestinians, some of whom control immense oil reserves , life-blood of America and the world. I include the alienation of 1.5 billion ordinary people of Muslim faith around the world who are not Palestinian, yet who look upon Muslims anywhere as their brothers, and in a crisis will come to their aid. And finally I include the imponderable cost of the events of September 11, the disillusionment and humbling of a nation.

Since September 11, I have waited, mostly in vain, to hear any media commentators asking the really important question: What have we Americans done to make people hate us, and how can we stop it? Terrorism is the outward expression of an inner disease or mind-set. And that disease is hatred. It's this hatred that we have to understand, counter and overcome.

It is futile for Bush or Powell to talk glibly about a war against terrorism, which is only the symptom, the end-product. A war against the symptom can have no ending while the underlying disease remains. We can't stop terrorism with military strikes, which will only increase hatred and be self-defeating. For every Bin Laden killed there will be a hundred young men infuriated by our actions who will join the ranks of the radicals, and volunteer for suicide attacks. For us, now, it is terribly tempting to take revenge action that will assuredly make matters much worse.

Somehow we have to get at the disease, hatred, and the questions we must ask are self-evident. How did we bring this hatred upon ourselves? It is not being directed to Canadians or Italians or Australians. How was it that these madmen hated so much the American people?

We Americans are such nice people, decent and civilized, family-loving, fair-minded, with the best intentions for everyone. What have we done to deserve this terror? Where did the hatred come from? And why is it such intense, bitter hatred, far beyond a reasonable level of political dislike? If we can answer these questions honestly, we have started, hesitantly, to see ourselves through others' eyes, and grasp more clearly how to correct some baleful misjudgments of the past.

The best answers would surely come from the hijackers. The September 11 attackers were not primitive, uneducated men; they were evidently educated, and had plenty of time to think long and deeply, even logically, about what they were planning to do. To them the attack on America was right and just, a long-overdue punishment for our nation's perceived cruelty and injustice, and our bully tactics in Israel, Iraq and elsewhere.

One hundred thousand innocent Iraqis are said to have died in the mass U.S. bombing of Iraq during Desert Storm, and half a million Iraqi children are said to have died because of U.S.-imposed sanctions. How do you think that news sounds when reported on the streets of Arab cities, even in "friendly" Arab countries? The numbers are far higher than those who died on September 11. Why don't we cringe to hear these figures? And what about the children who die daily from American bullets in the West Bank, who dare to throw stones because a brother was slain last week, or their home was demolished yesterday. It is we ourselves who have sown the seeds of hatred that created Bin Laden and his ilk.

In the hijackers' considered judgment, the punishment planned for New York and Washington was so necessary they were willing to give their own lives to carry it out. They held us responsible for crimes against them and their people, awful crimes that justified extreme measures in response. This punishment was a lesson so central to achieving justice that in their minds it outweighed the collateral sacrificing of thousands of innocent individuals.

By our standards the hijackers were bad, evil men with tragically twisted minds. But in a distorted way they had a kind of heroic bravery, believing passionately in a cause which involved their national and cultural honor. How many Americans have this level of premeditated self-sacrificing commitment to democracy and freedom?

I read in the Los Angeles Times that President Bush has amassed in the territories around Afghanistan a military armada far larger than the one used in Desert Storm. I quote Chalmers Johnson: "If this armada is used against the hopeless and impoverished people of Afghanistan, there is no doubt it will produce a general crisis throughout the Islamic world, probably affecting even moderate nations such as Indonesia and Malaysia. The end result will not be a 'victory' in a 'war on terrorism,' but a further cycle of terrorist attacks, American casualties, and escalation."

"We must recognize," Chalmers continues, "that the terrorism of September 11 was not directed against America but American foreign policy. We should listen to the grievances of the Islamic people, stop propping up repressive regimes in the area, protect Israel's security but denounce its apartheid practices in Palestinian areas, and reform our 'globalization' policies." He concludes that "if the United States' only response to terrorism is more terrorism, it will have discredited itself, and can expect to be treated as the rogue state it has become."

These are harsh words from an American writer, quoted from a lead article in the Los Angeles Times. But my own views of events in the Arab world come not from some American journalist, but from the thirteen years I spent living in the Middle East, learning to understand the culture of Arab peoples, and to see events of history through their eyes. Only when you familiarize yourself with the history of Palestine and its partition can you understand with any fair balance the passions and immoderation on both sides.

When I first arrived in Lebanon, I was dismayed and indignant to hear British and American policies criticized in bitter, condemning tones. But after sustained exposure to the voices of perceptive Lebanese friends, and after grasping the realities of Balfour and Sykes/Picot, and reading the stark history of the War of 1947-48, I experienced an about-face, an astonishing change of world view.

I learned about the intimidation, the violent atrocities, and the forced dispossession that led so many Palestinian citizens to flee for their lives, only to be shut up in huge dehumanizing refugee camps, where many remain to this day. Arab peoples indeed suffered indignities and exploitation at the hands of Western powers. Yet ordinary citizens in the West, and most of all in the United States, seem unable to perceive the imbalance, the blind insensitivity, of their past policies, and certainly unable to foresee the dire long-term consequences of continuing down that road. September 11 forced those consequences grimly into our awareness. But many people are still not grasping the historical roots of the bitter resentment that has smoldered so long in the hearts of Arab peoples.

This truth just doesn't come through from news media in the West. Only by being amongst the victims and experiencing first-hand the heart anguish of good people who desperately want to believe in America, only then does it seem possible to achieve a more balanced view. And in my opinion, a more balanced view is an essential starting point if the United States is ever going to turn back the tsunami of resentment and hatred that has been building for many years.

Today America is reaping the harvest of what it sowed over fifty years ago when President Truman pushed through the United Nations a vote in favor of partitioning Palestine. Thereby approval was given for the establishment of a new State of Israel.

At the time it seemed to be a kind, generous move, giving all voting nations a hand in offering recompense to the Jews of Europe who had suffered horribly under Hitler. What was not so clearly seen was that the plight of angry uprooted Palestinians would haunt the world increasingly as time passed. Both Britain and France, with their experience of governing in the Middle East, feared for the future and abstained from the vote for partition. But Truman won the day. And eventually the United States would pay a fearful price, and will continue to do so until it awakens.

Anyone who truly wants to understand the ongoing strife in the Middle East should read a modern history of the area. If it can be found, I recommend a book by Jewish spokesman Alfred Lilienthal, who in 1953 published What Price Israel? He predicted tragic consequences for his country, the United States, and for Jewish Americans. But even he had no notion of the scale of hatred and violence that would engulf this country and shatter forever its equanimity.

Only time will reveal whether our leaders have the sense of history and the wisdom to propel the United States in a new enlightened direction. Undoing all past wrongs is not possible. But we must search for a place where justice and fairness are seen to be honored, where our national actions will match our lofty ideals, and where we will once again deserve the position of moral leadership that has been honored in our rhetoric but not in our deeds.

I am grateful for Bernard Brandstater's considered, careful and clearly well-intentioned remarks. I appreciate their respectful tone. Also, it is helpful to have the perspective of someone who has lived in the Middle East and studied its history while living and working with some of the people who have been directly affected by what has happened.

I myself am unqualified to speak authoritatively on the history of the Middle East. But I have followed the situation caused by the terrorists who attacked the United States on September 11 as well as recent developments in the Middle East. Based on these observations, I have a few responses which others may find thought-provoking.

First I must acknowledge a debt to one of my major mentors during the last fifteen years, radio commentator Dennis Prager. My own views mesh so often with his, I sometimes lose track of who had what thought first. His stated priority in life is to help maintain and restore good values in our society, and to promote moral clarity. He has spoken much on this issue, and I do not mind saying that he has influenced me, as have many others on both sides.

Prager was a passionate land-for-peace advocate, right up until the failure of the final summit, mediated by Bill Clinton, at Camp David between Yassir Arafat and Ehud Barak. The details of that are well known. A whole line of American presidents have tried very hard to broker a peace for the sake of both Israel and the Palestinians, all without success.

In what follows, I recount Dr. Brandstater's points one by one in bold print and then comment on them from my point of view.

1. The reasons [for our affinity with Israel] are easy to see. In culture Israelis are much like ourselves, with European traditions and culture and values.

It’s not that we share "European" traditions and values, but that we share Judeo-Christian and democratic ones. Democracies don’t go to war with each other. They support each other because they want to see these values survive in the world. Every truly democratic and free nation is extremely important to all others. We must go to bat for each other, and Israel belongs in that tent.

I submit that the rightness or wrongness of what happened fifty years ago, with the partitioning of this land by the United Nations, can be argued ad infinitum. It is done. No country on the planet has been born (or restored) without birth pains, or pain to another people group. As with slavery, or the conquest of the Native Americans, we must find a way to go on from here.

It has been said that this is not a culture war. But I believe it is. This is a war between the values of the Western world, and the values of the Islamic-extremist world. To ask whether this would be a moral war, one might ask oneself this question: In twenty years, do I wish to be living in a country more like Afghanistan, or do I wish to be living in a country more like America?

This society has been attacked. We must respond. How that response should play out is for our leaders to determine, but respond we must.

2. [The Israelis] are so unlike the unsavory-looking spokespersons, from leader-Arafat on down.

Unsavory looking? How about just plain unsavory? I know of few "spokespeople" with more unsavory records than Yassir Arafat. Americans in general don’t pay much attention to how spokespeople look. They care how they act. If the point is that the Palestinians are represented by an unfortunate set of leaders, we surely agree.

3. We have developed a visceral, reflex affinity for the Israel kibbutz ideal, make-the-desert-blossom, and all that.

Again, we have developed an affinity for people all over the world who share our basic values. I don’t believe this has one iota to do with either kibbutzes or flowers in the desert.

4. America’s ever-ready support for Israel’s success as a nation has been purchased at an immense cost.

At what cost do we abandon a fellow democracy? Where should we draw this line? I do not believe that we can place a price on freedom or on our attempts to rescue and support any nation which so clearly shares America’s deepest held concepts about what kind of government and what kind of society works best for the greatest number of citizens.

5. What cost? Fifty years of awful dispossession, deprivation and suffering by the Palestinian people.

What about the awful dispossession, deprivation and suffering by the Jewish people in the fifty years before that? How far back shall we go? While one can and must have sympathy for the suffering of the Palestinian people, especially where they may have been treated unfairly, one can have no sympathy for those who resort to mass murder to get their point across.

Again, I am no expert on Middle Eastern history. But allow me to present a transcription of a recent call to Dennis Prager’s radio program and his response. I would be interested in knowing how others perceive this.

Caller: "I have here an article I’d like you to comment on; it’s from Reader’s Digest, Oct. 2001, and ironically, it came out before the attack. The article is about suicide bombers. It quotes from a teacher of the Hamas, in Palestine:

I’d like you to comment on this. This morning I heard you say that the suffering these people are going through is basically irrelevant to their reasons for fighting against the U. S. Obviously they don’t consider it irrelevant."

DP: "Well, who is ‘they’? Is Osama bin Laden not richer than you or me, and any twenty thousand Americans? Has he suffered? Has Saudi Arabia suffered? It has never been colonized."

DP: "Wait, the people who attacked us were largely either from Egypt or Saudi Arabia. America never colonized either, and Britain colonized Egypt. Saudi Arabia was never colonized by anybody. It’s theology. It’s not suffering. Why aren’t Hindus doing this?"

"The Palestinians could have had a state so many years ago. They rejected it in 1948. In 1948 the U. N. split this area. Ninety-nine percent of the Middle East is Arab. They gave one percent of that land to the Jews for their ancient homeland. Jews went back there. Jews have always lived there, except when they were expelled on various occasions. The only independent states that ever existed, in fact, in what is called Palestine were Jewish states. There was never a Palestinian State, there was never a Palestinian national entity in the history of the world. Which is fine. That there is a new entity called Palestine is no problem. I have no problem in theory with a Palestinian state, if it’s peaceful.

"They were offered a state in ’48. Instead they tried to destroy Israel. Israel survived, so Jordan took over the West Bank. Jordan then invaded Israel in 1967. Israel, to protect its existence, then conquered the West Bank from Jordan, and under Israeli rule, not under Jordanian rule, the Palestinian national entity arose.

"The Israelis said ‘Fine, we’ll give you your land back, just like we gave the land back to Egypt, because they made peace with us. You make peace with us, we’ll give you your land back.’

"This was said a year ago. Mr. Clinton himself said, ‘The Palestinians sabotaged this whole talk; they were offered 96% of their land, and it wasn’t enough for them.’

"So that is the reason for that. But you see, the Palestinians don’t say this, they are mired in hatred and anger. They want Israel destroyed. Israel has never appeared in a Palestinian textbook, and it appears in very few Egyptian textbooks. They still act as if there is no Israel. So what is Israel supposed to do?"

[JMG: I also have a Washington Post article somewhere which points out that, after the Oslo Accords, both countries agreed to go home and teach the next generation to love their neighbors and support peace. Israel taught their school children to sing songs of peace toward Palestinians; Palestinian children were taught to sing, "Death to Israel," which they do to this day.]

Caller: "Is there anything that the U. S. could do to somehow mitigate this hatred?"

DP: "Yes, destroy all the [militant] haters. That’s what we did in Germany, and then a beautiful Germany arose, right? We destroyed the Nazis. We de-Nazified Germany. We’ll de-hatify the Islamic Middle East."

"This is a major war. There are those who pooh-pooh the idea that it’s a civilizational war. It might be. I’m not saying it is right now. It really depends on what happens within the world of Islam. That is where the real battle is. I mean, there is obviously this external battle, but the real battle is for the soul of Islam. Now, who will win, I don’t know. But it needs its own civil war, it needs its own reformation. American Christianity, for example, had its civil war over a moral issue called slavery. And many Christians died to fight for the idea that their religion does not allow human beings, because of color, to be enslaved. And if Islam does not battle the evil within it now, it has a very problematic moral future."

Dennis Prager had another caller whose disillusioned Egyptian friend had left America to live in Egypt and returned to kiss the ground here because of the religious intolerance and lack of freedom in Egypt.

DP: "I totally believe this story. Our tolerance, our acceptance of everybody from any background, our non-blood orientation, is quite alien to good parts of the Middle Eastern world. Hence we’re hated for it. It is a fact of life—and I guess I can’t say this too often, because I don’t think a lot of people really understand how true this is—that the un-free hate the free. They hate us because we present a staggering threat to them. Are we allowed to read their side? Yes. Are they allowed to read ours? No.

"And who is ‘they’? This, I would say, is virtually the entire Middle East. The press in the entire Middle East is largely government controlled. I wonder if there has been an article in any mainstream Egyptian newspaper—and this is Egypt we’re talking now, not Afghanistan—that has ever presented Israel’s side. I wonder if there’s one such article. We hear all sides, all the time. It’s part of the moral gulf."

From what I understand, the suffering of the Palestinian people doesn’t come close to the suffering and deprivation of, for example, the people of Afghanistan at this very moment under the Taliban. Just consider how women are treated in the two societies. CNN’s "Beneath the Veil," an examination of the status and treatment of Afghan women, is informative. And here are two links I can recommend on this subject, both for very recent articles from the London News Telegraph. These articles can be reached on the Internet by clicking their titles.

The living conditions of the Palestinians are superior to many millions of Muslims living across the rest of the Middle East. My point here is not to weigh and compare sufferings, but to show that we may have to look within Islam for some of the key reasons for Islamic suffering, including that in Palestine.

6. One hundred thousand innocent Iraqis are said to have died in the mass U. S. bombing of Iraq during Desert Storm, and half a million Iraqi children are said to have died because of U. S. imposed sanctions.

The figure of 100,000 is the June 1991 U. S. estimate of how many Iraqi soldiers lost their lives. No one knows how many Iraqi civilians died, as there is no reliable information on that. According to Greenpeace, the most intelligent estimates are broad, ranging between 5,000 and 15,000.

All wars regrettably involve the loss of civilian lives. The U. S. certainly did not target civilians. And not a single Iraqi citizen, soldier or otherwise, would have lost his life at the hands of the U. S. if Iraq had not invaded Kuwait. If we were to invade Mexico or Canada with the intention of wiping those countries from the map, would we expect to have a war with no loss of innocent life?

With regard to the children, here is this remarkable passage from Peter Beinart in The New Republic of September 20, 2001:

We realize, I’m sure, that nothing gets reported in most Arab media sources except what those governments wish to have reported. Do we know what is being "reported" in Egypt, if not all over the Middle East? That these attacks on New York and Washington were the work of Israeli Mossad (intelligence) agents, who hired American pilots to crash the planes in order to make Arabs look bad.

If we created Bin Laden and his ilk, which I do not at all believe, then perhaps we doubly owe the world a swift removal of their network.

9. [We face] the alienation of 1.5 billion ordinary people of Muslim faith around the world who are not Palestinian, yet who look upon Muslims anywhere as their brothers, and in a crisis will come to their aid.

Any Muslims who defend terrorism cannot be considered a moral people. We have a right (indeed, I believe, a responsibility) to fight back in this war. I agree with Prager that this violent ideology, which specifically targets a hated people group, is directly and clearly analogous to Nazism. Surely it is the clearest moral issue America has faced since that time.

Allow me to paraphrase Dr. Brandstater's remarks as if they were written in 1940: "I have waited, mostly in vain, to hear any media commentators asking the really important question: What have we Jews done to make people hate us, and how can we stop it? The extermination camps are the outward expression of an inner disease or mind-set. And that disease is hatred. It’s this hatred that we have to understand and uproot. [No, we didn’t need to "understand" Nazism or its associated hatreds; we needed to wipe it out.] It’s futile for Churchill to talk glibly about a war against Nazism, which is only the symptom, the end-product, and a war against it can have no ending. We can’t stop Auschwitz, or the other abominations, with military force, which will only increase hatred and be self-defeating. For every Adolph Hitler killed there will be a hundred young men infuriated by our violence and they will join in the ranks of the radicals, those volunteering for service in the Third Reich. For us, now, and for the Allied Forces, it is terribly tempting to take revenge action that will assuredly make matters much worse. Somehow we have to get the disease….. hatred….. and the questions we must ask are self-evident."

While pacifism is a beautiful-sounding doctrine, as C. S. Lewis pointed out, it either amounts to nothing, or is self-defeating, as the pacifist will eventually be simply wiped out by one or the other non-pacifist. "If war is ever lawful," he wrote, "then peace is sometimes sinful." I can hardly imagine a clearer time than this, unless we await the next terrorist’s nuclear missile.

We would do well to recall Edmund Burke’s words: "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing."

The pacifist mind-set, I now see, may be a further problem in that all violence comes to be seen as morally equivalent: War is violent, therefore evil. Militarily defending a tiny country such as Kuwait against aggression from its neighbor is violent, therefore evil. Targeting innocent civilians in high-rises with bombs made out of airplanes full of parents and children is violent, therefore no more or less evil. Capital punishment is a form of violence, again, equally evil. You hear this argument often among those opposed to the death penalty: "If we murder the murderer, it puts us in the same category as him or her."

Am I hearing this thinking in some of Dr. Brandstater's arguments? "It is terribly tempting to take revenge action," he says, without any apparent consciousness of the moral difference. To be honest, this logic frightens me more than the thought of a global war resulting from all this. Why? Because the chances of a truly hopeless global conflagration—or a world of Afghanistans—actually increase when the more immediate threats to this society go un-addressed.

I feel that a significant and resounding omission of Dr. Brandstater's essay is its lack of any explicit condemnation of the terrorist's actions on September 11. Related to this is his tendency to morally equate the terrorist's act with a "revenge action" of the U. S. I see this in his quotation from Chalmers Johnson: "If the United States' only response to terrorism is more terrorism, it will have discredited itself, and can expect to be treated as the rogue state is has become."

10. In the hijackers’ considered judgment, the punishment planned for New York and Washington was so necessary they were willing to give their own lives. They held us responsible for crimes against them and their people, awful crimes that justified extreme measures in response.

The same could be said of Timothy McVeigh. Also, these men did not believe they would die; they believed they would go directly to paradise, where 71 virgins awaited to please them.

I find it interesting that Dr. Brandstater never calls them terrorists, but only "hijackers." To me this further reveals a mind set which does not exactly feel comfortable with condemnation of the terrorists. These were not merely "hijackers." Hijackers hold a plane hostage until it reaches a destination not originally intended. The acts of September 11 went far beyond that, and in our words we either recognize that, or not.

Does he believe these acts of terrorism against New York City and Washington, D. C. were justifiable in any way? If so, we inhabit different moral universes. In strictly ethical terms, what the terrorists were thinking is of no issue. These people want us all dead. Whether they are angry with us for Zionism, modernism, imperialism, or vegetarianism may be a fascinating question for another context. Just now we need to figure out how to defeat those who want us dead.

Whether the U. S. needs to examine itself and repent of actions on its part is a wholly separate issue. There is no moral equivalence here. The U. S. has never had as its aim the targeting of innocent civilians. These people do. That is the difference. And it is huge. As Salman Rushdie wrote early on in The New York Times, we need "to be clear about why this bien pensant anti-American onslaught is such appalling rubbish. Terrorism is the murder of the innocent; this time, it was mass murder. To excuse such an atrocity by blaming U. S. government policies is to deny the basic idea of all morality: that individuals are responsible for their actions."

11. This punishment was a lesson so central to achieving justice that in their minds it outweighed the collateral sacrifice of thousands of innocent individuals.

Yes, and again, so what? The Unabomber felt the same way. Should our efforts have been focused on understanding the roots of his anger, or toward capturing him and bringing him to justice?

12. By our standards the hijackers were bad, evil men with tragically twisted minds.

13. In a distorted sort of way they had a kind of heroic bravery, believing passionately in a cause which involved their national and cultural honor. How many Americans have this level of premeditated self-sacrificing commitment?[

Thank God, not many—for killing innocents, though they may soon show how far they will go to defend freedom.

Every monstrously evil person who has caused millions to suffer and die can arguably be described as having a kind of "heroic bravery." That could have been written about Stalin, Pol Pot, and our own homegrown terrorists, though in their case I guess we can lament they weren’t "heroically brave" enough to have committed suicide. Sincerity, passion, and "bravery" for one’s cause is no measure of moral uprightness.

Give me a cowardly but good-hearted American (or Muslim) any day rather than a single day with a brave terrorist.

14. Only being amongst the victims and experiencing first-hand the heart anguish of good people who desperately want to believe in America, only then does it seem possible to achieve a balanced view.

Surely in America we can and do hear both sides. I simply don't find it true that there are no credible and articulate mouthpieces in the American press for the Palestinian/Arab side of the equation. I read articles making their case regularly, and while they contain good and valuable points, I simply find the other side, on the whole, both more intellectually honest and more morally compelling at this time in history.

Dr. Brandstater is particularly concerned, and understandably so, for the Palestinian people, with whom he has shared a special relationship. I, too, have a real concern for their plight and dearly hope peace can be achieved in that region. At the same time, I cannot help wondering if his aggregate assessment of things might be different if he had also lived for a time in Israel.

I find myself sympathizing with all suffering people who are under siege from regimes that torture, enslave, imprison, starve, and persecute them, virtually all of whom live today in non-Western countries. Many of these are Muslim countries, I’m afraid. Again, what does that say about the ideology that produces this type of society? What kind of nation does Western civilization produce when it goes about promulgating democracy and freedom? Which kind of society would we rather live in? I think the answers to these questions shed light on the moral justness of the war on which we are about to embark.

It seems to me, from his essay, that the only response to the monstrous acts of September 11 Dr. Brandstater would condone is that of trying to understand the terrorists' complaints, and then modifying our foreign policies to mollify them. But they hate us for much more than that we support Israel and have troops in Saudi Arabia (at Saudi Arabia’s request).

As Stanley Kurtz of The National Review points out, these terrorists (and, to all appearances, the Palestinians themselves) do not object to this or that policy with regard to Israel. They object to Israel’s very existence. But far more than that, these Muslim extremists hate the whole Western world. They hate it for its modernity, technology, democracy, religious and economic freedom, progress for women, and free press. In short, they hate everything we stand for.

Understand them? I understand that they killed more than 6,000 innocent civilians, by design. Next time, it may be six million. Mollify them? Not possible. As with the Nazis, they do not wish our improvement. They wish our destruction.

Of course America hasn’t been perfect. Surely it has made mistakes in the Middle East, as elsewhere. These must be visited and examined and, to the extent they can be and to the extent that they require it, rectified. In the meantime, we have to fight this, the clearest evil since Nazism: Islamic extremist terrorism, and the regimes that support it. Should only the policemen who’ve never broken a single law protect our citizenry? Should only countries who have no moral stains defend other countries? If so, no evil and no aggression would ever be fought.

Has America collaborated with unsavory regimes? Yes, in fact it collaborated with Stalin against Hitler. Thank God it did. Sometimes the larger evil has, for the moment. to eclipse the lesser evil. I believe this is one such instance.

For more information about the author of these books, please click www.dennisprager.com.

Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin, Why the Jews? The Reason for Anti-Semitism. Simon and Schuster: March, 1985. 198 pages.

After the failed peace talks between Yasser Arafat and Ehud Barak at Camp David last year, Arafat ordered, or acquiesced in, the renewal of the intifada. The inescapable conclusion reached by many Israelis was that Camp David and its violent aftermath exposed the fraudulence of Arafat's expressed desire for coexistence between Israel and a new Palestinian state. For more information, please click www.CommentaryMagazine.com.

I thank Janine Goffar for her painstaking and thorough commentary on my remarks. I will not pursue that discussion just now, but rather sound a positive note. I take comfort and hope from the reality that on both sides of this sad conflict there are good, sophisticated, even noble people who genuinely want peace, if only a feasible formula can be found.

On the Israeli side I think of one of Israel's most venerated archeologists, who wrote the definitive reference work on Palestinian pottery. She is Dr. Ruth Brandstater Amiran, who told me her Jewish family came from Crakow in Poland, with no known connection with my Protestant family. She is married to David Amiran, retired president of a scholarly Israeli think tank. My 3-hour lunch with the two of them at Hebrew University was an illumination, sheer joy

On the Palestinian side I could cite many, but will mention one of my medical students in Beirut. I challenged him to justify his family's abandonment in 1948 of their large home and business in East Jerusalem. Without rancour, but with sadness, he explained they had been determined to stay put, come what may, along with their neighbors in a street of well-to-do Arab homes. But every week or so, in the middle of the night, one of those homes, with its occupants, was blown to the heavens with a bomb. And they got the message. What amazed me was the calmness, the large-mindedness, the acceptance of Allah's will, that marked this student. He would be chagrined by today's terrorism.

Here is a moving appeal from a Jewish political scientist in Australia, addressed to the Palestinian people:

AN APOLOGY AND A PRAYER

An Open Letter to the Palestinian People From Jews in Israel and the Diaspora

In the period between the religious festivals of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Jews are enjoined to take steps to repair the wrong we have done to others. This is an attempt to reach out to you, our Palestinian cousins, to change the nature of the bloody and merciless exchange, which currently dominates relations between us.

We who sign below, ordinary Jews, want to tell you that we are sorry. We are sorry for the calamity you experienced in 1948, for the loss of your homes and land, for your dispersal and exile, and for the families that have grown up for three generations in refugee camps without a sense of home or belonging.

We are sorry particularly for the Jewish part in your exodus - the expulsions, the shelling of villages, and those killings which created the climate of fear which prompted many to leave. We are sorry that our terrible century of tragedy became your tragedy. You did not ask for it and you did not deserve it. And we were blind to it.

Our people were blinded by our own suffering and loss, rage and grief, desperate to survive, desperate for a home, a refuge, a place we could call our own. We were unable to see the magnitude of the sacrifice we were asking of you. In

We apologize unreservedly for the increasing harshness of our occupation since the victory of 1967, and for the further losses we have inflicted on the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza: losses of land, of water, trees and homes, of dignity and humanity and freedom. This occupation has been perverted by greed and hubris, and it has corrupted our people as it has humiliated and angered your people. It has created hatred and a thousand new wounds between us. It needs to end.

We want you to have your own state, that you can take pride in, a refuge and symbol of hope for your own people, with Arab Jerusalem as its capital. We want to return to you that land and those settlements which stand in the way of the wholeness and territorial integrity of your state

We will not now give up our own state. We have yearned for it for too long, fought for it too hard, and need its sanctuary too much to let it go. But we want our two states to work together as partners for the good of all our peoples.

We want your refugees with our help and the help of the community of nations. We want your refugees with our help and the help of the community of nations to receive reparation and help to build new lives and re-settlement if they wish. We will welcome a certain number to Israel. They will not find the country that their forefathers left, but we hope they will find through this process a new climate of acceptance and tolerance.

We respect the determination of the people of the West Bank and Gaza to resist the occupation. But we ask you urgently to stop the suicide bombings and the shooting of innocent people. These acts generate a climate of fear, hatred and mistrust, and the belief that there is no rational partner in peaceful dialogue.

For our part we will resist the aggressive and intimidatory acts of our own leaders. The shelling of villages and assassinations and destruction of homes and crops must stop.

At this time of darkness and war, it is incumbent upon us to search out every glimmer of light and hope. We wish for our people and your people, for our children and our children's children, joy and prosperity, peace and

God's blessing.

Sincerely,

Ephraim Nimni

School of Political Science Phone: +61 2 9385 3243

University of New South Wales Fax: +61 2 9385-1555

Sydney 2052, Australia E-mail: E.Nimni@unsw.edu.au

http://www.arts.unsw.edu.au/politicalscience/staffnames/nimni.htm

Violent dispossession and massacre are an ugly scene of which the Jewish people have seen more than their share. What an irony that, to survive, they inflict some of the same on others! A not-too-distant parallel is the slaughter and expulsion from their homeland of the Armenians by the Turks. Try as they may, Armenians worldwide have never succeeded in getting much recognition or redress. Weak and scattered, they simply don't have a strong ally willing to confront a potent adversary.

For five million Palestinians it's different. For them the events of 1947-48 are still vivid in living memory, as well as the 1967 seizure of the West Bank and their oppression since then. Furthermore, they are supported passionately by 100 million Arab neighbors whose control of oil sources is hugely significant. As a desperate resort they could blackmail us and Europe.

So for simple pragmatic reasons, I think the U.S. has no option but to rethink its self-made adversarial position vis-a-vis the Arab nations, not to mention a billion other Muslims. President Truman and the United Nations. could not foresee this outcome when they pushed for partition in 1947. General Marshall did foresee it and advised Truman against it; Britain and France abstained. Many will enjoy Lilienthal's book What Price Israel which recounts this history.

Dr. Brandstater has presented a challenge for clear-thinking and fair-minded Americans to consider the grievances of the Palestinian people even as we refuse to accept those grievances as justification for any of the recent acts of terrorism.

First let me say that I would welcome any contributory comments from those more thoroughly versed in the matter of Palestinian-Israeli relations from either perspective.

The letter from the Jewish political scientist in Australia is very moving. I am reminded of a speech that was published on the Christianity Today website, by a Yale University divinity professor by the name of Miraslav Volf. This speech was delivered in New York on September 11, before Prof. Volf knew of the events that were happening right at that moment, just a few blocks away. He calls for the pursuit of "embrace" or reconciliation, but clarifies that before true embrace can occur (as opposed to "cheap reconciliation"), both sides must possess the will to embrace, as well as a willingness to state truth (e.g., to confess wrongs) and to accept justice. But the will to embrace must come first, which will then provide a framework for the search for truth and justice.

In the letter from Australia, one can see the hopeful will to embrace, as well as a willingness to acknowledge the truth of his side’s failings, and be heartened by it.

It would be equally heartening to see such a letter from a Palestinian. One could almost begin to hope….

On the 60 Minutes show of October 28, there was a segment that showed a summer camp in Maine which, over several years, has hosted Palestinian and Israeli teenagers for one month in which they all lived, ate, played, and discussed together—yes, even argued over differences. But when the sometimes heated discussion sessions each evening were ended, they all went out and played basketball and other games together—with mixed teams. By the end of the month, there were many solid friendships and much optimism for the future.

This past summer only one side showed up. Why? Because Yassir Arafat no longer allows Palestinian young people to come.

Regarding the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine, at the outset it must be stated that while Palestine is almost defined now by its determination to see the extinction of Israel, Israel has had its own problems with its right-wing extremists who want nothing to do with Palestine or Palestinians. These people have occasionally turned violent, sometimes acting against Palestinians, and sometimes against Israeli moderates, with murder and mayhem.

But there are two important—pivotal—differences. First, the Israeli government has never sanctioned violence targeting innocent civilians. Arafat’s record—as well that of most other Palestinian leaders—has been dismal in this regard.

Second, since its inception Israel has generally predicated its official actions on two things: defense of its existence, and a real desire for negotiation and peace. Palestine has not been a true partner in this at all. Instead it has manifestly yearned for only one thing: Israel’s destruction.

In 1948, the United Nations partitioned this land in a good-faith effort to be as fair and just as humanly possible in righting historical wrongs and restoring a homeland to a dispossessed people who at that time had none. Whether this was the "right" thing to do cannot be determined by how angry it made one side. Justice as well as injustice almost always engenders anger. We are all, individually and collectively, responsible for what we do with our anger. Surely the Israelis were just as angry when they were expelled from this same land on various occasions. But they have been willing to try to make peace.

Arafat’s rejection of the Israeli offer that surprised everyone, even Bill Clinton, with its generosity at Camp David last year sealed the awareness of many observers of the utter falsity of his claim to want peace. Ehud Barak risked his life in making this offer, but in doing so he effectively called the Palestinians’ decades-long bluff. Now at least the situation is clear.

Dr. Brandstater presents anecdotal evidence that the Palestinian people have suffered greatly at the hands of Israel, and we know from other sources that this is true. The question to be asked is this: Would the Palestinians have suffered any of these things if they had accepted the partition, as Israel did, rather than immediately beginning a campaign of warring against its new neighbor which continues to this day? How can Israel be expected to tolerate this ongoing aggression and outright terrorism without pushing back in self-defense?

It is better to swallow a bitter pill than to go on endlessly chewing it, especially when spitting it out is not an option. The United States would not be acting morally or humanely to encourage the Palestinians in their endless chewing by more support when they do not evidence the will for peace.

Sometimes there is no good solution to a conflict. We—or the world—or its nations must choose between a reasonable but imperfect solution and a less perfect solution, and then it must be worked out. Not everyone will be happy with it. Those not happy must eventually learn to live with it. The world cannot tolerate its malcontents lashing out in endless destruction. Appeasement, as we have seen in earlier wars, is neither moral nor pragmatic.

For those interested, I recently received this document in an e-mail (caveat emptor):

1. Nationhood and Jerusalem - Israel became a nation in 1312 B.C.E., two thousand years before the rise of Islam.

2. Arab refugees in Israel began identifying themselves as part of a Palestinian people in 1967, two decades after the establishment of the Modern State of Israel.

3. Since the Jewish conquest in 1272 B.C.E. the Jews have had dominion over the land for one thousand years with a continuous presence in the land for the past 3,300 years.

4. The only Arab dominion since the conquest in 635 C.E. lasted no more than 22 years.

5. For over 3,300 years, Jerusalem has been the Jewish capital. Jerusalem has never been the capital of any Arab or Muslim entity. Even when the Jordanians occupied Jerusalem, they never sought to make it their capital, and Arab leaders did not come to visit.

6. Jerusalem is mentioned over 700 times in Tanach, the Jewish Holy Scriptures. Jerusalem is not mentioned once in the Koran.

9. Arab and Jewish Refugees: In 1948 the Arab refugees were encouraged to leave Israel by Arab leaders promising to purge the land of Jews. Sixty-eight percent left without ever seeing an Israeli soldier.

10. The Jewish refugees were forced to flee from Arab lands due to Arab brutality, persecution and pogroms.

11. The number of Arab refugees who left Israel in 1948 is estimated to be around 630,000. The number of Jewish refugees from Arab lands is estimated to be the same.

12. Arab refugees were INTENTIONALLY not absorbed or integrated into the Arab lands to which they fled, despite the vast Arab territory. Out of the 100,000,000 refugees since World War II, theirs is the only refugee group in the world that has never been absorbed or integrated into their own peoples' lands. Jewish refugees were completely absorbed into Israel, a country no larger than the state of New Jersey.

13. The Arab - Israeli Conflict: The Arabs are represented by eight separate nations, not including the Palestinians. There is only one Jewish nation. The Arab nations initiated all five wars and lost. Israel defended itself each time and won.

14. The P.L.O.'s Charter still calls for the destruction of the State of Israel. Israel has given the Palestinians most of the West Bank land, autonomy under the Palestinian Authority, and has supplied them with weapons.

15. Under Jordanian rule, Jewish holy sites were desecrated and the Jews were denied access to places of worship. Under Israeli rule, all Muslim and Christian sites have been preserved and made accessible to people of all faiths.

16. The U.N. Record on Israel and the Arabs: Of the 175 Security Council resolutions passed before 1990, 97 were directed against Israel.

17. Of the 690 General Assembly resolutions voted on before 1990, 429 were directed against Israel.

18. The U.N was silent while 58 Jerusalem Synagogues were destroyed by the Jordanians.

19. The U.N. was silent while the Jordanians systematically desecrated the ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives.

20. The U.N. was silent while the Jordanians enforced an apartheid-like policy of preventing Jews from visiting the Temple Mount and the Western Wall.

21. Israel is the only member of the U. N. that is not permitted membership on the Security Council.