In her April 17 letter (“Whose side are we on?” WJW, April 17) Rabbi Alana Suskin/Peace Now, attempts to explain which side she supports. It is a sad commentary when this question has to be raised for it demonstrates lack of unity when unity is most needed. She writes she is a Zionist and a Jew who wants peace and security for Israel, but disregards the admonition that when one ignores history, one is doomed to repeat the same mistakes.
Suskin believes that peace and security for Israel will result from a two-state solution (TSS), ignoring the five previous attempts: 1922, 1936, 1948, 2000, and 2008. A TSS is impossible when Palestinians refuse to accept the existence of Israel as a Jewish state (per Islamic ideology, Judaism is an extinct religion), insists on flooding it with its own population and refuses to negotiate boundaries. She fails to understand the significance of decades of Palestinian demonization of Jews in its schools, news outlets and mosques. Sounds familiar, for didn’t demonizing of Jews in the 1930s make it easy for Germans to participate in the Holocaust?
Suskin, claiming to be a Zionist, might want to better understand its raison d’etre. Zionism is a national movement for the return of the Jewish people to their homeland and the resumption of Jewish sovereignty in the land of Israel. It recognizes the centrality of Jerusalem, the Temple Mount and Judea and Samaria to the Jewish people. Would she cede eastern Jerusalem to the Palestinians? Would she surrender all of Samaria and Judea which contained a multitude of ancient Jewish communities mentioned in both the Christian and Jewish Bibles, but destroyed by Jordan in 1948?
Given this history, why does Suskin believe in a two-state solution? Did the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000 and from Gaza in 2005 bring peace and security? Isn’t the Israeli government fully aware of history and unwilling to repeat the same mistakes?
WARREN MANISON
Potomac
