Israeli-Arab Violence

Your headline should read “A Cruel 42 Years.” What’s so sad about it all is that while Israel has had to remain a warrior state all this time to remain a free and sovereign nation, the Palestinian Arabs continue to live without the state that could have been theirs if they had accepted the 1948 United Nations partition plan. Instead, their people are either refugees, or live under the control of other peoples, both Arabs and Jews.

It’s well and good to editorialize that each group must “elevate their ambitions, and find a way to live in harmony,” but who is to teach them? Surely not today’s political and spiritual leaders. They are so blinded by their own belief that they alone are the “true believers”; they “see, hear and speak” only their evil, in the name of their proclaimed “truth.”

Such living at cross purposes can only end in self and/or mutual destruction.

Is there no answer to a “cruel month,” or “years,” or “life”? How individuals and leaders answer that question should determine who should lead us, and how we are governed.

I do believe that life is best lived in a society where love, equal justice and opportunity prevails. We must demand that of those who govern us, and build a community of nations where the emphasis is on unity. There is no community without it.

HYMAN H. HAVES, Pacific Palisades