Win-Win Solution for Mideast

Hussein Ibish’s take on the need for Arab, Israeli and American introspection is as sad, self-defeating and negative a polemic as one could read (“What Went Wrong in the Arab World? Ask Yourself,” Commentary, Nov. 25). Ibish seems to say that the Arab “repressive and parochial regimes” need to be destroyed in order for the Arab peoples to gain control of their own destiny; Israel is a completely illegitimate “19th century-style colonial power” and the U.S. (and to some extent Great Britain and France) bear the blame for the “promotion of the most right-wing Muslim politics as a counter to socialism and nationalism in the Arab world.” With such sweeping statements, Ibish’s call for introspection is a joke. Armed revolution and terrorism would be a much more natural step, which in fact is what the U.S. is trying to defeat right now.

Most dispiritingly, Ibish says that a robust, informed, democratic Arab public would be even more belligerent toward Israel and toward U.S. policies, as he himself, as communications director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, appears to be. If he is right, then why wouldn’t a similarly reformed and rejuvenated Israel and U.S. be more belligerent toward the Arab world? Self-righteousness doesn’t work. There must be win-win solutions, or we all assuredly will lose.

Jerry Beigel

Los Angeles

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Thanks for the insightful piece by Ibish. I wish all of my countrymen (women) would take this advice to heart, lest we lose everything that we say we treasure. We have let our country be taken over by a shocking number of scoundrels, but it is not too late to save it if we wake up soon.

Millie Barnet

Santa Rosa

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Ibish raises some interesting points regarding Western double standards and hypocrisy in the Middle East. However, his ignorance of history is amazing. He states that Israeli society is “in . . . denial about the basic facts of its own brief history.” This is a brief history of more than 5,000 years, beginning with Abraham, spiritual father to both Jews and Muslims! Ibish rails against the Israelis’ control of the Palestinians but obviously is blind to, or ignorant of, the forces of Rome, Persia, Constantinople and others who drove the Jews from their land, the present Israel, and prevented their return for thousands of years.

Elliott C. Mercer

Newport Beach

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It amazed and saddened me that Ibish somehow believes that the political, social, economic and religious woes of over 200 million Arabs in a dozen Arab countries have their roots in the 4.7 million Jews in Israel. He says that “Israel proceeds as if it had not violently wrested control and ownership of all its territory from the Palestinians.” He does not report that when Jews began returning to their ancestral Israeli homeland in the 19th and 20th centuries that they purchased land legally. These purchases echoed Abraham’s purchase of the burial cave in Hebron.

He does not indicate that Arabs have repeatedly tried to destroy Israel through wars, terrorism and boycotts. Ironically, he neglects to point out that hundreds of years ago, Muslims took control of Israel by the sword and built their Jerusalem mosques on the ruins of both the Jewish temple and a Christian church.

Paul Nisenbaum

Los Angeles

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As a longtime consultant on the Middle East and Islamic affairs, I concur with Ibish’s observations and conclusions. We Americans have helped to create and prop up the nondemocratic regimes that we rhetorically detest; thus, our own inconsistencies are apparent.

What is ironic is that Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft is starting to imitate the Middle Eastern regimes he and President Bush criticize--they brook no dissent, and if you dissent you are called a “traitor” (even getting laws passed called “the USA Patriot Act”); they are detaining people without charges and dismissing their civil rights for open-ended periods of time; wiretapping what were formerly privileged conversations between attorneys and clients; doing away with Miranda rights; and now saying they will use military tribunals, though they are legally only to be used during times of declared wars.

We have also lost our moral direction, for we say we abhor the killing of innocents yet we allow Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel to do this on a daily basis, with weapons given to Israel for purely defensive purposes. When an Israeli is killed, it is “terrorism”; when Sharon orders the assassination of Palestinians and innocents are killed as well, there is little sound from President Bush. Surely, our nation has lost its Christian morality. Both Bush and Ashcroft will never be able to wash this stain from their hands.

Sam Hamod

President, American Islamic

Institute, San Marcos