Sam, I thought you might like this article for your blog.
Very Interesting!!!!!
Paula R. Stern Paula
R. Stern is CEO of WritePoint Ltd., a leading technical writing company
in Israel. Her personal blog, “A Soldier's Mother”, has been running
for more than 5 years. She lives in Maale Adumim with her husband and
children.
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Dear Secretary of State John Kerry
Because
of my respect for the United States, I will attempt to afford you the
honor you think you so richly deserve. It’s hard to speak to you with
anything but anger, hard to feel the need, again, to start from the
beginning because you clearly choose to ignore history in your quest for
glory. It is a quest destined to fail but its outcome, even, or more
accurately especially, in failure, will hurt Israel.
Greater
men than you have tried to make, to force, peace on the Middle East. I
promise you, you will fail too. You will fail because you are not
addressing the root cause of the problem. You, like so many before you,
take the easy way out. Blame Israel. It is so easy to do, and so stupid.
I
could speak to you of history – a history longer and greater than you
can imagine. I could speak to you of injustices – yes, our land is
filled with the graves of those murdered for the unjust reason that they
lived here, or traveled abroad, or ate in the wrong restaurant, or took
the wrong bus.
I
could speak to you of justice – of a population exchange similar to
those that have taken place through out history as nations settle
between war and peace. They left their lands to go there, most
voluntarily so that their invading brothers would have a clear path as
they pushed the Jews into the sea. And our people, who left their homes
and possessions in Arab lands, most forced, not voluntarily, and came
here.
We
fed our brothers, clothed them, gave them homes. And most importantly,
we loved them and gave them the most precious of gifts – a future, a
present, as integral parts of the land and people of this country. My
neighbor, the family across the street – they live in the same houses
that I do, drive the same cars, attend the same schools. He is an
engineer; he is a judge in the courts. She is a nurse; she is a lawyer.
All my neighbors, though their grandparents came here with nothing.
And
at the same time, across many borders, the Arabs put their “brothers”
in refugee camps, all but starved them. They raised them to be
embittered – not at those who kept them in squalor, but those they had
hoped to defeat. They blame us and you are naive enough to blame us as
well?
They
chose war, John Kerry, while we chose compromise. And you would blame
us for this horrible chain of the decades? They invaded – five Arab
nations, in 1949. They attacked. Out of sheer desperation, we won enough
of our land to give us a measure of security…it lasted only 7 years,
until they attacked again. But oh what we did in those 7 years. We
welcomed our refugees from Europe, from Arab lands. We built them tent
cities and turned them into real cities. We conquered swamp land and
made it habitable and we raised our children to dream that someday there
would be peace. We created universities and schools and parks.
But
the Arabs would have none of it. In 1948, in 1956, again in 1967 and
again in 1973 and again and again, almost daily, we fight off their
attempts to do in 2014 what they failed to do in 1948. They have not
learned and amazingly enough, John Kerry, neither have you.
We
have built and evacuated whole communities; we have withdrawn from land
in exchange for nothing but the hope that we could appease the
“unappeasable.” We have flown around the world to help others – from
earthquakes, tsunamis, devastating storms, famine and more.
We
have allowed the Arabs – yes, allowed them, to fire tens of thousands
of missiles at our cities and we know they have more than 170,000 more
rockets and missiles ready to try again. At any time and with no notice
whatsoever, we have the power to flatten Gaza into the world’s largest,
flattest parking lot. And each time they attack, we think of it and know
we can’t do it, won’t do it. And you would blame us for the failure to
make peace?
When
we attempt to stop them, to push back their military capabilities, just
a bit, we aim for the rocket launchers, the arsenals, the training
camps while they aim for our cities – Beersheva, Shderot, Ashkelon,
Netivot, Ashdod. And you would threaten us for the ongoing state of war?
There
cannot be peace until you recognize your enemy. There cannot be
successful negotiations if you fail to understand those you would bring
to the table. You fail on both counts.
After
hearing that you threatened Israel unless the peace talks succeed, I
can only conclude that your ignorance is even greater than I thought. I
knew, years ago, that you had no clue what the Arab world is thinking,
feeling, dreaming of. Now I know the same is true about Israel – you
don’t understand us any better than you understand the Arabs and that
amazes me.
Unlike
the Arab world, Israel is an open society – read our newspapers, speak
to the people on the street. No one will stop you and we won’t escort
you with secret police to control your experience. Pick any town, city,
village, settlement and you will hear the same thing. Pick any street,
any person and ask them what they dream of, what they want for their
children. We do not dream of glorious death and martyrdom for our sons.
We dream that they will never have to even serve in the army.
I
have friends who agonized over their sons going into the army. I could
understand my agony, as I grew up in the United States where all my
friends promised they would run away from the US before they would ever
be drafted. I knew nothing of army and war and guns. But my friends here
in Israel? They had served in the army; why did they suffer so when
their sons were drafted.
“We
served so that they wouldn’t have to,” I’ve been told over and over
again. They never believed, 20+ years later that their sons and
daughters would have to sacrifice three years of their lives, that we’d
still be at war.
You
won’t hear that in the Arab world. Oh, they’ll tell you that they dream
of peace because they know that is what you want to hear, but in
Arabic, they will talk of a time when there will be no Jews in the
entire Middle East, never mind no Jews in the Palestine they envision.
Their religious leaders will whip them up to the glory of Allah and
jihad. But still you would expect us to make peace with them?
Theirs
is a culture built on a dream – a dream that they will own the world…my
corner, John Kerry, and even yours. Theirs is a society that believes
in a heaven earned by causing the deaths of others and so when their
sons blow themselves up and kill those Jews, they celebrate. And yes,
they celebrated on 9/11 when they killed your people just as they
celebrated when we released their terrorists and killers in yet another
attempt to appease them…and you.
If
you don’t understand their ability to celebrate, I will confess that
neither do I. I have seen the mothers hugging their sons in a video,
made the night before they killed themselves…and the innocent men,
women, and children, of their enemies who happened to be on that bus, in
that mall, or asleep in their homes. It doesn’t matter to them if they
kill a soldier, a man with a gun, a pregnant woman, or a helpless child.
The more, the better, in their twisted interpretation of what their God
wants. You don’t understand this and I can see where it is hard, given
your western mentality. But not understanding it doesn’t give you the
right to ignore it.
You
won’t fail in your goal of ramming peace down our throats because of
this, however. You will fail because, amazingly enough, you don’t even
understand Israel. We are the easiest to get, the easiest, honestly. All
you have to do is listen and see – but even that is beyond you.
Listen
to our national anthem – it does not speak of war. It is called, “The
Hope” and speaks of a dream of 2,000 years to be a free people. We value
that – the ability to protect ourselves, to be free in the land of our
forefathers. Even the most right wing among us would be willing to
compromise for a real peace, a peace where our children and
grandchildren could live without the fears we deal with daily. We do not
interfere in how they raise their children; we are stupid enough to
even fund some of their text books – all in our own misguided belief
that we can make peace with those who do not yet want it.
You
threaten us with economic sanctions, with international isolation. This
is your latest blunder, and it is a big one. Israel is laughing at you
this morning. Economic sanctions?
They
gassed us, beat us, bombed us, burned us. They haunted us, hunted us,
hated us through the centuries across many lands and through this land
in the last several decades. They burned the synagogue where my
grandmother was hiding; they gassed my great grandmother to death.
International
isolation? They put us in ghettos, they exploded our buses and shot our
babies in the head. They lynched my neighbor, attacked the buses on
which my friends travel. They shot my daughter’s teacher (and his infant
son) and ambushed and killed a colleague of mind.
We
are fighting for our lives, John Kerry – no less today than we were in
1948. The ONLY difference is that through the greed and stupidity of the
Arab nations, we are stronger than we ever were, not weaker. You will
fail, John Kerry, because you are fool enough to think you can come
here, wave your American flag, look at your watch and tell us you’d like
to finish these peace negotiations by 5:00 p.m. because you have a date at the opera or a baseball game to go to.
For
a long time now, the Arabs have fooled you. They’ll speak to you of
peace over the coffee they serve you and then when you leave the room,
they slap each other on the backs and laugh – another successful day at
making the US look stupid.
Now,
this time, we will have that in common with the Arabs; we are laughing
at you too. Naftali Bennet has tried to explain it to you, “There has
not yet been a nation that has given up its land due to economic
threats, and nor will we. Only security will bring economic stability,
not a terrorist state near Ben-Gurion Airport.”
Greater
men have failed, John Kerry – and I promise you, until you know Israel
and until you understand the Arabs, you don’t have a prayer of
succeeding. Go watch the Superbowl, at least then, maybe you’ll have
done something worthwhile.
Paula Stern
