Vol. 79/No. 44      December 7, 2015

 

Letters

 
Israel-Palestine is complicated
I am writing to applaud your Middle East coverage. The first sentence of Seth Galinsky’s Nov. 2 article (Attacks on Jews, Israeli Gov’t Brutal Response Deal Blow to the Working Class) more fully captures the complexity of the conflict than most complete articles. The Israeli-Palestinian crisis is deeply complicated, with sorrows on either side. Your article and editorial provides perspective on that — as well as an important working-class point of view.
Mitch Horowitz
New York, New York

Apartheid-type occupation
I am very glad to read your analysis of Russia and Ukraine. It seems that you are very sensitive to the issues of imperialism and occupation of one country by another. However, I miss this kind of analysis regarding Israel and Palestine. It seems you ignore the fact that whatever the Palestinians are doing, this is coming after 60 years of occupation, of miserable apartheid-type occupation. Of course anti-Semitism is wrong, dangerous, etc. But so is apartheid, occupation, destruction of homes, illegal settlements etc. Palestinians should not be paying the price for European anti-Semitism.
Nina Sakun
Hartford, Connecticut

Bring Jews and Arabs together
I had searched in vain for a sophisticated and Marxist or socialist analysis of Israel-Palestine, when an American friend sent me links to your recent coverage. Other left-leaning publications and organizations offer simplistic articles with no criticism of Palestinian leadership or lack thereof and the terrible (and self-defeating) actions we’ve seen lately, and at other junctures.

These dreadful attacks are not only criminal atrocities, but drive deeper wedges between Jewish and Arab peoples, and must be condemned in the strongest manner.

We Israeli socialists and human-rights activists were hopeful 20 years ago. Israeli trade unionists, in particular, had shown (and still do) the capacity to organize and fight alongside their Arab brothers. Many forces are responsible for the dreadful trends of recent years, but certainly Hamas and other Islamists deserve a large amount of blame.

It is not too late to bring together Jews, Arabs, and others in a workers movement for a just, nonsectarian society. Only by firmly rejecting hideous acts of violence and terror, such as this wave of knife attacks, can unity by forged.
Lev Abram David
Kiryat Arba, Israel

 
 
 
 
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