Israel and Lebanon

I have my own grievances against Prime Minister Ehud Barak, but Israel’s departure from Lebanon is not one of them. To look at it as weakness is truly idiotic. It took strength and courage to leave Lebanon in the face of all the obstacles from without and within.

Yossi Klein Halevi (Commentary, May 25) is 100% right when he warns Arab leaders not to think that Israel is weak and just sits there ready and willing to absorb their abuse. Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, especially, is prone to send his people to die on the altar of holy terrorism and just might make the mistake of thinking that now is a good time to start a little war.

Nothing will be achieved away from the negotiating table. Israel has no taste for blood. It is time for the Arab leaders--including Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, who is the owner of a peace agreement with Israel signed by a really great Arab leader, Anwar Sadat--to shake off this thirst for blood and start being serious about peace and all the wonderful things it will bring them.

BATYA DAGAN

Los Angeles

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I was appalled by The Times’ May 24 cartoon by Michael Ramirez (Commentary), which depicts a pack of rats labeled “Hezbollah” feeding ferociously at a bowl marked with a Star of David and “S. Lebanon.” This drawing is highly offensive, dehumanizing and all-out racist. Instead of rejoicing at the ending of a brutal military occupation, as everyone including the retreating Israeli soldiers did, Ramirez seems to use the occasion to further the pain by portraying the Lebanese resistance, sanctioned by international law, as vermin. I am sure that he knows that vermin imagery is a familiar slander in Western culture against people of Semitic origin, a traditional trope of European anti-Jewish racism.

This hatemongering and racial insensitivity is not fit for The Times. It helps create a climate of hate and violence against Arabs and Arab Americans. I hope that Ramirez would have the courage to draw against the killing of civilians, destruction and outrageous human rights violations by Israel in Lebanon. Maybe this way, The Times would redeem itself from such bigoted practices.

MICHEL SHEHADEH, Western

Regional Director, American-Arab

Anti-Discrimination Committee

Stanton