Click here for the open letter to which Roger Cohen responds below
From: “Cohen, Roger”
To: Maurice Ostroff
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 2010 15:49:21 -0400
Subject: RE: An open letter
Dear Maurice,
Thanks.
You are wrong when you suggest I cannot write fairly about Israel. As you know, in the Israel-Palestine conflict everybody has a different definition of fairness. I try in good conscience to present a balanced picture.
Yours,
Roger
Roger Cohen,
Columnist, International Herald Tribune and New York Times
+447809164199
October 7, 2010
Dear Roger,
Thank you for your prompt reply to my open letter. I appreciate it and I will add it to my original letter on my web site which has already received more than 2,000 visits. I’m sure that my readers will be as pleased as I am to learn that you “try in good conscience to present a balanced picture”.
Nobody is more anxious than I am for peace between Israel and our neighbors. I and all my colleagues pray for the time when our youth will be free to pursue their careers after completing high school, rather than serving in the army.
I therefore revert again to your very practical question whether Israelis are ready, with the right security guarantees, to make the painful choices leading to peace. And again, I ask you in all sincerity, instead of mere criticism, to offer some creative suggestions for security guarantees that you believe would justifiably assuage our very real fears of a recidivist aggressor setting up a base on the doorstep of Ben Gurion airport and only 11 miles from Tel Aviv.
If you suggest international forces, I must refer to Einstein’s well-known quote “Insanity is doing the same things again and again expecting different results”. Would it be sane to ignore the lesson of 1967 when the UNEF forces left Sinai as soon as Egypt massed its forces there and closed the Gulf of Aqaba to Israeli shipping?
And would it be plain silly to ignore what happened in Rwanda in 1994 when over 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were hacked to death while the world and the UN did worse than sit idly by? General Romeo Dallaire who then commanded the UN peacekeeping force in Rwanda told CNN that he is still haunted by the Security Council’s callous attitude in 1994. When it was clear what was about to happen, he sent an SOS to the UN appealing for reinforcements to stop the killings. Instead of assenting, the Security Council callously voted to cut his force from 2,500 troops to 450 poorly trained and ill-equipped men who were also later withdrawn. Click here
Our concern about security is heightened by the continuing incitement to hatred in Palestinian schools and mosques and aggravated by Abbas’ recent sponsorship of a ceremony in which a Ramallah square was named after Dalal al-Maghrabi, the terrorist who slaughtered 37 Israelis and who was further glorified by naming two high schools, a computer center and several children’s summer camps after her. Do you doubt that this glorification of murderers inspires further terror acts?
Last December after Rabbi Meir Avshalom Chai was murdered by Palestinians who fired at the car in which he was traveling on the West Bank, Fatah, which is headed by Abbas issued a statement on its official website calling for the continuance of the armed struggle, declaring resistance, and not negotiations,
“as the primary option for liberating Palestinian lands from the filth of the children of Zion.”
Roger, may I hope that in addition to expressing your opinions on adequate security guarantees, you will demonstrate your efforts to present a balanced picture by acknowledging that cessation of incitement is one of the essential conditions for achieving peace.
My readers and I look forward to learning your considered views.
Sincerely
Maurice
