Is Saying ‘We’re Sorry’ Saying Enough?

Re “The Power of ‘We’re Sorry,’ ” Commentary, Feb. 8: By David Grossman’s logic, our legal system, from police to judges to juries to prosecutors to the prisons, should offer an apology to those who are convicted and incarcerated. Would those felons then be more inclined to behave in a more socially responsible manner? Would the Palestinian Arabs do likewise?

Rich Luskin

Studio City

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The commentary by Grossman on the need for some acknowledgment of suffering is commendable at some level. Yet it fails to recognize that Israelis and Palestinians are not two tribes duking it out. Neither is there a parity in violence or suffering. Some two-thirds of the Palestinian population are refugees or displaced people. Anyone with an understanding of history of other colonial conflicts knows that native suffering cannot be remotely compared to colonial settler suffering.

In any case, it is not about saying sorry for the suffering; it is about rectifying the injustice and, in this case, the basic injustice of ethnic cleansing of non-Jews from Palestine.

Mazin Qumsiyeh

Orange, Conn.

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In my opinion a far more powerful declaration than “I’m sorry” would be for Mahmoud Abbas to say terror is wrong, morally wrong, unspeakably wrong. If he insisted that terror stop because it is wrong and not because it is inexpedient, then and only then would peace be closer.

Rather than just making declarations about the past, we must demand real change and accountability. Otherwise we will continue in the same cycle of denial about the real issues in the conflict and peace will remain elusive.

Darrell Sherman

Richmond Hill, Canada

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I agree with Grossman’s idea that a great first step in settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be for both sides to acknowledge the suffering each has caused the other.

I cannot agree, however, with the oft-repeated absurd notion he endorses that somehow the Palestinians are responsible for “the large amount of property that Jews left behind in the Arab countries they fled.”

This idea is akin to the Pilgrims asking the Indians to compensate them for what they left in England when they decided to settle in the New World. This idea is so illogical that it is difficult to even comment on.

Thomas D. Kelly

West Springfield, Mass.

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Grossman is correct that the Israelis and Palestinians are trapped in a mutual dance of exclusive victimhood. I just returned from Israel and Palestine, where I spoke to peace workers and ordinary citizens on both sides.

The ordinary citizens on each side believe their side has made significant, courageous concessions for peace but that the other side has done “nothing.” When I pointed out concessions made by the other side, those acts were routinely discounted. I came away quite discouraged.

Grossman suggests a solution to the impasse he describes and I observed -- that the leader of each side should acknowledge the other side’s suffering and take partial responsibility for that suffering.

Skeptics will say a leader can never admit such responsibility. But Grossman correctly points out that in the end each side will make just such an admission. Grossman asks, and all peace-loving people ask, why not make that concession now?

Jeff Warner

La Habra Heights