Letter to the Editor

Please consider the following letter for publication in the Register 
Citizen. I am currently in Israel, so if you need to contact me please 
use email or call my cell phone in Israel. To reach it from the US, the 
usual way is by dialing 011-972-50-869-5035. Thank you.
 
To the editor:
 
To partially respond to the cowardly hate-monger who repeatedly hides 
behind and misuses the anonymity of "Soundoff" to launch his 
error-filled diatribes against America's only real friend in the Middle 
East:
 
The Israeli flag has blue lines because its design was based on the 
tallit, the Jewish prayer shawl; the absurd claim that they represent 
the Tigris and Euphrates would be laughable if it has not been used to 
incite so much violence and hatred already.
 
If those two rivers were Israel's "penultimate boundary goal," then that 
democracy is certainly going about achieving that aim in a very strange 
way. It gave the massive Sinai back to Egypt. That area is now being 
used to smuggle large quantities of massive Iranian rockets to the 
terrorists in Gaza, rockets the anonymous writer refers to as "bottle 
rockets." It gave all of Gaza to the Palestinian Authority, has already 
given about 40 percent of Judea and Samaria (aka the "West Bank") to the 
PA and has offered virtually all of the rest. What a strange way to 
expand Israeli territory!
 
Thousands of those "bottle rockets" were launched at Israeli civilians - 
a war crime under international law - before what the anonymous writer 
refers to as Israel's "most recent provocation." As they say, the 
hostilities started when Israel began to fight back.
 
Recently, the Hamas Politburo Chief Khaled Mashaal gave a 
well-publicized interview to CNN's Christiane Amanpour. He was praised 
as becoming more moderate when, out of one side of his mouth hs said "I 
accept a Palestinian state according to 1967 borders with Jerusalem as 
the capital ..."
 
But even more recently, speaking in Gaza at a rally commemorating the 
25th anniversary of the founding of Hamas, he spoke out of the other 
side of his mouth: "Palestine is ours from the river to the sea and from 
the south to the north. There will be no concession on an inch of the 
land. … We will never recognize the legitimacy of the Israeli occupation 
and therefore there is no legitimacy for Israel, no matter how long it 
will take. … Jihad and the armed resistance is the only true path to 
liberation."
 
This is the nature of Israel's genocidal adversaries. The anonymous 
Soundoff writer, like so many anti-Zionist propagandists, falsely 
accused Israel of precisely what the Palestinian Arabs are trying to do.
 
Israelis want peace. Israelis dream of peace, Unfortunately, it takes 
two to tango. Until the Palestinian Arabs give up their dream of 
destroying Israel, those dreams of peace will remain a fantasy.
 
Sincerely,
 
Alan Stein, Ph.D.
President Emeritus
PRIMER-Connecticut
Promoting Responsibility in Middle East Reporting
www.primerct.org