How the 1967 War Came Home to Me

Here is a true prophet of peace-- repeatedly vilified, as she has been even in some of the responses to this statement--yet one of the few real Christians in the world today who knows what Israel and America have done to drag themselves and the Christian and Jewish religions into a moral pit from which we will be a very long time cleansing ourselves. In fact, it is a very good question whether American Christianity as such has any such prospect. Most American Christians--as distinct from truly Christian Americans--are utterly indifferent to what their tax dollars and the prestige of their nation do to promote Israel's
brutality and criminality, and those of us who have spoken out merely to inform our fellow citizens of facts have been slandered ourselves as fools and tools of anti-Jewish propaganda. Israel today is nobody's eschatology of spiritual and moral expression or fulfillment. Unless she massively reverses course, she will make herself a graveyard of the prophets. This is a horror which is to me one of the truly unthinkable thoughts, but here it is, staring us in our face in our own time.

Ah, that old "22 percent of historic Palestine" talking point. About half of the "historic Palestine" that Ms Ashrawi feels deprived of is barren Negev desert. The 1947 UN Partition Plan allocated about 2/3 of the rest for the Arab state, roughly proportional to the population. They lost some of that in the war they started.

And that's not even mentioning that 75% of Mandate Palestine was lopped off to form trans-Jordan Palestine (aka Jordan), leaving the Jews with the Negev plus about 4% of Mandate Palestine, under the UN partition Plan. This was too much for the Arabs to tolerate, so they chose to resolve the matter by force, and the rest is history.

Ms. Ashrawi and the truth have often been strangers. Her reputation for distortion, half-truths, misdirection, omission of crucial context and outright fabrications is well known in Israel.

To provide such a person with a platform like the New York Times doesn't add any luster to the reputation of this venerable paper. It should be incumbent on the Times top at least have a rebutting opinion piece for readers to see that there are THREE sides to every story... Party A's version, Party B's version and the truth, which will be somewhere in between A and B.

Hanan Ashrawi is (and has been) the Palestinian equivalent of Kellyanne Conway. Look beyond the words to find the real facts. Israel has always been willing to live in peace with its neighbors. Palestinian leaders: "We're extremely peaceful. Most peaceful EVER. Believe me!"

Sadly, many Israeli writers could easily compile an equaly long list of brutal Palestinian Arab transgressions agaisnt Jews, with no doubt equal accuracy and exaggeration.
But it doesn't get either side anywhere to simply demonize the other in hopes of arousing even more hatred. Does anyone believe that either Arabs or Jews will give up and go away if there are enough rants against them? On both sides, promoting hatred only encourages more resistance on the other.
The only way forward is to seek tolerance, understanding, and reconciliation. This will require compromise, compromise by all. Op-eds like this get in the way.

Wow. Not one mention of the scores of terror attacks on innocents on schools, cafés, city buses, and anywhere else blood was shed. Jewish and Arab blood, at that. Not one mention of the glorification of shahids and martyrs in Palestinian media. Not one mention of the teaching of the dehumanization of Jews to children. Not one mention of Yassir Arafat's diversion of billions of aid money to his personal bank accounts. Peace between neighbors can happen when two houses are in order. And the Palestinian hasn't been long before since 1967, despite every attempt to blame the house that's standing strong.

I commend Hanan Ashrawi on this article. Israel is a racist, Apartheid state, one of the most brutal, racist and oppressive on earth. Thankfully more and more people around the globe and even in the United States are waking up to the fascist, incredibly racist reality that is the Apartheid state of Israel.

Enough! Time to end five decades of occupation, oppression and population transfer that is illegal according to international law. Enough of the phony excuses for the land grab. Enough of Billions and Billions on US aid and military funds! Time for change. Either a two-state solution, with full Palestinian rights in their own continuous land, or a democratic one-state solution that provided full and equal rights for all in a secular government.

I shed not one tear for Hanan Ashrawi and her family.

As Golda Meir said: "Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us."

Maybe if the Arabs and Palestinians had not attacked Israel, sought its destruction, and repeatedly walked away from fair peace settlements, life would be different. Your policies of hate get you nowhere.

She "forgot" to mention that Israel controls what goes in and out of Gaza, because Hamas, which rules the Gaza strip refuses to recognize Israel, calls for its destruction, and invests the vast majority of international aid it gets in building terror infrastructure such as tunnels and missiles.

Western governments from Europe to America are grappling with the problem of attacks from young, radicalized Muslims. The prime cause of these attacks is the 50-year occupation of Palestine by Israel as modern terrorism began in the wake of the 1967 war. The only chance of mitigating the danger of violent attacks is to end the occupation by enforcing UN resolutions which means international pressure on the Israelis by the international community led by the United States. As this is not likely to happen the West will have to continue compromising its own freedoms to provide for Israeli domination of the Holy Land and oppression of the people of Palestine.

Classic example of perpetual victimhood. 50 years later it's all about how they did this to us and they were mean, blah, blah. Enough, no one's listening because we've heard it for 50 years. Half the time, the facts aren't accurate, and all the time there's never any effort to look in the mirror.

Jordan shelled Israel. That's why her home got shelled. All these "terrible" things happened to her because the Egyptians were threatening another holocaust. Eisenhower made commitments to maintain international shipping, Johnson and the UN refused to uphold them. Israel defended herself. She has that right, while not perfect the effort was exemplary. Everyone knows this, unfortunately when you are a perpetual victim it doesn't matter. It's all about what they did to us.

There's no such thing as a limited liability war. All these saints she refers to did nothing when the UN offered them a state in 1948 which they turned down and started a war. After the 6 Day War when Israel offered to negotiate and received the 3 No's of Khartoum in response what did these poor victims do? Continued fighting. In 2000, Ms. Ashrawi was part of the team that turned down the Camp David Accords. Sorry, no tears for you-you are not a victim.

There's no such thing as a limited liability war. You turn down a peace offer, start a war and lose, you don't get the offer again. Look in the mirror.

Dr. Ashrawi relates that she and her family "had been driven out of their home in Tiberias, on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee, where my father was then stationed as a doctor in the Palestine Army."

What Palestinian army was that? There was no Palestinian army in 1948. What there were were Arab forces and militia, local and from neighboring countries, seeking to destroy the Jewish state before its independence and after. Perhaps she meant the Arab Liberation Army.

There were battles in Tiberias, but before between 1936-1938 the Arabs murdered 20 Jews there. The Jews were the majority of the population there.
It was the British who evacuated the Arabs from Tiberias.

So let's review her long litany: Fight your enemy, seek to destroy your enemy, ignore offers of peace or partition, lose to your enemy, then there is a price to pay.

When the Palestinian yearning for freedom is not coupled with a distorted sense of justice ignoring inconvenient facts and when it is free of seeking Jewish blood, then perhaps the Palestinians might achieve a viable deal, viable for both sides.

The writer should begin by looking in the mirror. When will the Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza decide to cease being the cat's paw for the intransigent opposition to the lone Jewish state in the Middle East? When will negotiating from the leadership on the Arab side be other than (when there is any negotiating at all) a ploy of takkiyah, saying anything for convenience but reserving (at least from disclosure to the West) the option to return to violence and opposition to any recognition of the State of Israel? That's the real problem with which the writer, who has been the duplicitous face of supposed WB/Gaza Arab moderation, for many, many years.

In 1948, Israel was a very tiny, irregularly shaped country, not much more than a series of old Jewish towns linked together -- and in the case of Jerusalem, not even a Jewish town, but more like a Jewish neighborhood.

Concerted Arab attacks on Israel gave it more territory -- two large chunks of which it has already returned. The Sinai is now a stronghold of Arab terrorists. So is Gaza. When Muslims actually want peace, they'll get it. In the meantime, they hide their weapons among civilian populations so that any retaliation can be labeled a war crime.

Hanan Ashrawi is just another one of those historical revisionists who try to mix up everything to claim that Israel is the bad guy when it really isn't. I would love to hear him talk about life in the West Bank when it was under Jordanian rule, which he probably never will talk about. How come it's only considered under occupation once it was annexed by Israel but not under Jordan? Also, why didn't Jordan just make it a Palestinian state in the 20 years they had that land especially when there weren't even any Jews living there at the time with the just the stroke of a pen? Another thing is that nobody seemed to call it an occupation when Jordan allowed for settlements in the West Bank when they had nor was it seen as oppression when they were responding to attacks by Palestinian terrorists yet Israel gets called this when they do it. Nevertheless, Ashrawi will never admit the claim that Jordan attacked from the West Bank, which is why Israel annexed it in the first place and that was to avoid being attacked from there again. Then again, he will never admit it was taken from Jordanian rule because there was no Palestinian state there at the time, plus the Six Day War had absolutely nothing to do with the Palestinians to begin with. Whether or not Israel started this war, they did win it, and the winner of the war is the one who gets to decide the aftermath even if it means keeping the lands they got in that said war, while the loser has no say on this at all.

There has never been a country called Palestine. However, the "Palestinians" - a regional term, analogous to what we might call Midwesterners in the US - have been given their chance for a state. They only have their leaders to blame for the refusal to follow through. And we'll never forget them dancing in the streets after 9/11.

Everyone who receives mediation training is introduced to what might be called Non-Fight Club Rule #1 which reads: Don't allow the disputants to dwell on history. Get them to focus on the future and possible solutions to the dispute.

Unfortunately, neither party in the Israel-Palestinian dispute seems to want to join the Non-Fight Club.

The tragic history and suffering in Palestine/Israel has gone on far too long and the complexities involved in making for a lasting peace are daunting and seemingly unsolvable. But wait! We have Jared!

Ms. Ashwari,
If you lived in the west bank of Israel at the time of the 1967 war, you were a Jordanian. Did you or your fellow Jordanians make any attempt to form an autonomous region for your clan?
The term Palestinian was coined by the British and appeared on the documents of ALL residents (Jews as well as Arabs) during the British Mandate. When Israel was formed by the UN in 1948 the term was no longer in use.
Arabs of all the surrounding nations declared war on Israel, a state which continues with the exception of Jordan and Egypt. The Arab nations fought subsequent wars in 1956, 1967, and 1973. Hundreds of millions of Arabs fighting a few million Israelis. They lost.
There are no "do overs".
Arabs chose to war over diplomacy and territory changed hands. Israel has withdrawn from Sinai to have peace with Egypt. It allows the Waqf of Jordan to preside over the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. It has withdrawn from land won in Lebanon, and allowed the Palestinian Authority to rule over vast areas of the west bank and Gaza and even over Jewish Holy sites in order to progress to a peaceful solution.
Please stop revising history to make the Arab population of Israel something it is not. Choose peace with and within Israel and reap the benefits of a progressive society.

I remember seeing the author on television with my own eyes, and hearing the author say, "We should have accepted partition. "
Those were her exact words. I would swear it in court.
But she neglected to say it in her article.

I won't address every misstatement of this piece. I will leave that to others.
I will just point out one fact.

Subsequent to WW2, there were 50 million refugees. Except for the Palestinians, the descendants of not one of them are considered refugees. Often, the refugees were displaced by ethnic conflict, like the 10 million or so refugees of the partition of India. Some were expelled, like the millions of ethnic Germans of Eastern Europe.

I just read an article in Al Jazeera, where people born in 1992 in ie Honduras, state that they are originally from ie Nablus. If they are from Nablus, I am from Latvia.

Moreover, why are children born in Lebanon of Palestinian descent denied citizenship, land ownership, education. They are not if their father is Lebanese. Only if they descend from the male line of Palestinians.

All of which is to ask, why are Palestinians treated differently than every other victims of conflict in the world?

This is because of Arab tribalism and will be applied to today's Arab refugees who number far more than the Palestinians.

There is nothing special about what happened to the Palestinians. What is special has been how it has continued.

If you support it in principle for all refugees, fine. Syrians who are resettled elsewhere and who will not be able to go home can be refugees in perpetuity. Including if they settle in America. If you support it in the Arab world, why not in America?

Quite the human rights position.

I find Ms. Ashrawi's claim of surprise at outbreak of the 1967 war to be disingenuous - did she miss the preceding BBC news alerts signaling imminent and united Arab hostilities against Israel? Also disingenuous is the claim that the PLO has compromised their claim to 22% of 'historic Palestine'. This is a term, I believe, with no historic meaning, and a construct that would subsume 100% of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.

Notably absent from this article is any mention of the numerous horrific terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians perpetrated by Palestinians. These attacks pre-date establishment of the State of Israel and continue to be perpetrated and glorified by Palestinians to this day. The attacks are also the indisputable cause of Israeli defensive security measures that result in much of what Ms. Ashrawi attempts to paint as Israeli oppression of an innocent civilian population.

Maximalist demands backed by violence and hatred are a losing Palestinian national strategy, a point that seems completely lost on Ms. Ashrawi.

To many Palestinians, possibly a majority , 1967 was neither unexpected nor novel.
It was in complete harmony with their perception of Zionism in general and Israeli behavior in particular: expand whenever an opening arises.
The truly unexpected and novel was the extent of the total Arab military collapse , particularly Egypt's and Syria's both regimes, the former under Nasser ,the latter under Al Bath having projected an image of strength and fortitude , were presumed to have digested the 1948 collapse and prepared themselves Not to allow it once more but to reverse it !
That was the shattering revelation of 1967 not Israel's military triumph: the collapse of the presumably progressive Arab regimes in a manner no less total than the collapse of Arab Offiacdoms, presumably the regimes oh the patriotic Bourgeoisie , in 1948 !
With two of the three potential launchers of an Arab awakening shamefully disgraced , bankrupted and utterly futurelessness there remained only one potential successor !
The Islamic Islamist way!
That led Arab masses , a majority of the Professionals, a solid fragment of the intelligentsia , with both bourgeois and progressive Arabist past allegiances , with only one way out and the huge growth of the Islamic/Islamist movements as sole contenders fot the future !
That is where we are now and where we will stay until that fateful,day that will reverse a modern history of defeat and submissions!

The author's family was living in Jordan in 1967. Jordan chose to attack Israel during the 1967 hostilities, despite being warned off several times by the Israelis. Have that attack never happened, the West Bank would never have been occupied. The author's real complaint should be to a Jordanian government, but that would be difficult to do considering that the Palestinians attacked the Jordanian government with the Black September movement in the early 1970s.

Put down the guns. Stop firing the missiles. Stop mistreating women in Gaza, gays, and others who are not of your dominant culture. Start acting like a state, and you will get a state. It will be 90% of what you wish for, but 90% of something is better than 100% of nothing. Then have fun with the ugly, messy, business of governing.

I'm sorry for your suffering.

The Times should also publish an Israeli account during that period. Armies of all neighboring Arab nations were aligned and ready to fight, to destroy Israel entirely and throw every Jew between the Jordan and Mediterranean into the sea. Our fate and survival as a people seemed, yet again, to be on the line. Hearing promises of your complete annihilation, then and unfortunately still now, is frightening. And on that day in June that fear was very very real.

Its easy for each side to ignore the plight of the other. Israelis and Jews are people too.

In Ashwari’s carefully scrubbed history Arabs were not killing Jews before 1948, there were no Arab armies attacking Israel in 1948, there were no Palestinian terrorist groups calling for Israel’s destruction between 1948 and 1967 and Arab armies weren't poised to destroy Israel in 1967. In fact, all those things occurred. The Palestinians never accepted Israel’s right to exist or cede any territory to Israel as their maps show Palestine covering the entire area.
Ashwari fails to mention that 850,000 Jews who were expelled from East Jerusalem in 1948 and from Arab countries in the 1950s.
There was no Palestinian state before 1948 and there was no historic Palestine, other than the British Palestinian mandate, which includes today’s Jordan, which occupies 76% of that total entity.
In Israel Christians and Muslims have freedom of religion. The Palestinians believe Jews have no rights and would be barred from their state.
If life is so unbearable, why don’t the Palestinian choose any of the 22 Arab states and why don’t any of them invite in as equal citizens? Israel accepts all Jews from all over the world. Lest it be viewed as racist remember that Jews have been persecuted and killed by Christians and Muslims for centuries. Can Jews not be allowed one tiny spit of land so they don’t have to rely on the momentary good graces of their host Christians or Muslims?
In a perfect world there would be peace, but that is not the world we live in.

Here's a small sample of peace loving Palestinian suicide bombings:

8-31-04 Be'er Sheva: 16 killed in twin bombings on two buses.

3-14-04 Ashdod: 10 killed in twin bombings at port of Ashdod.

1-29-04 Jerusalem:11 killed in suicide bombing on bus.

10-4-03 Haifa: 21 killed by suicide bombing in a restaurant.

8-19-03 Jerusalem: 23 killed in suicide bombing on bus.

1-11-03 Jerusalem: 17 killed by suicide bombing on bus.

3-5-03 Haifa: 17 killed by suicide bombing on bus.

1-5-03 Tel Aviv: 23 killed in bombing at Central Bus Station.

11-21-02 Jerusalem: 11 killed in suicide bombing on bus.

6-18-02 Jerusalem: 19 killed in bombing on a bus.

5-07-02 Rishon-Lezion: 15 killed in suicide bombing.

3-31-02 Haifa:15 killed in suicide bombing at restaurant.

3-27-02 Netanya: 27 killed by suicide bombing at Park Hotel during Passover.

3-09-02 Jerusalem: 11 killed by suicide bombing in crowded café.

3-02-02 Jerusalem: 10 killed by suicide bomber outside synagogue.

12-2-01 Haifa: 15 killed by suicide bombing on bus.

12-1-01 Jerusalem: 11 killed by suicide bombings at Ben Yehuda mall.

8-9-01 Jerusalem: 15 killed in suicide bombing at Sbarro pizzeria.

6-1-01 Tel Aviv: 21 killed in suicide bombing at a disco.

7-30-97 Jerusalem: 16 killed by suicide bombings in Mahane Yehuda market.

3-4-96: Tel Aviv; 13 killed by suicide bombing at Dizengoff Center.

3-3-96: Jerusalem: 19 killed by suicide bombing on bus.

2-25-96: Jerusalem: 26 killed by bombings on two buses.

Prolonged military occupation: War Crime
Settlement of occupied territory: War Crime
Expelling people from their homes and barring them from ever returning: War Crime
Collective Punishment: (sieges, curfews, closures home demolitions) : War Crime
Heavy military bombardment of civilian areas and the use of white phosphorus on said areas: War Crime

Refusing to legitimize your oppressors: Not a war crime
Not recognizing Israel as a Jewish State: Not a war crime
Refusing to accept to live in divided bantustans with limited sovereignty: Not a war crime

International Law has always been on the side of the Palestinians. It should be a guide to end this conflict, and there should be no conditions to granting Palestinians their most basic fundamental rights as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Instead, Israel and the United States would rather convict and sentence the entire Palestinian population to never ending occupation for the above-mentioned non-crimes.

It is indeed scandalous that any jew born anywhere in the world has the right to emigrate and live in Israel and in Europe many have the right to return to their old homes taken away during the WWII while those Palestinians evicted from their lands and homes have no rights whatsoever about their properties.

Here we go again on the debate of right and wrong. Ms. Ashrawi never mentions the horrific terrorism inflicted mostly on Jews living within the Green Line, nor alludes to the series of negotiated offers from 2000 onwards. The story line from virtually all Palestinian apologists is always the eternal victimized Palestinian, which she knows is an elaborate lie. Boy are they politically strong and championed by far more countries and people in the world, even by some who aren't anti-Semitic, though that element accounts for the lions share. Not coincidental.
Want to read an article that really explains why peace talks are doomed to fail, and why well intentioned third party diplomats totally miss the real issues? Go to Times of Israel, Haviv Rettig Gur, "Why peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians keep failing".
I do applaud the NYT for including multiple op-eds on the 50th anniversary, and opening them up to comments. We need more information (no fake news) and opinions based on facts to help educate people to the history and why peace remains so tragically illusive.

How would you feel if people who hadn't occupied your land for nearly 2000 years suddenly laid claim to the land based on biblical accounts. You would be angry especially if you were driven from your ancestral home and told it would never be yours again.

European Jews wanted a country after the devastation of the genocide of WWII and they created one out of land that belonged to the Palestinian people. Yes the Palestines have rejected peace more than once but they are not the only ones at fault. Both sides are equally guilty because a country formed out of brutality will never know peace. Those conquered can never forget what was taken from them especially when the victors treat them like they are subhuman.

Sadly this is a war with no end in sight. Neither side is willing to give an inch. Frankly without American support the Zionist Jews probably wouldn't have succeeded long term.

Another author infantalizing Palestinians, treating them as hapless children, devoid of agency. Palestinians made bad choices, again and again. Perhaps it's time they make some good ones?

An utterly disingenuous piece that sidesteps the many opportunities wasted or ignored by Palestinian leadership. And how convenient to ignore the complicity of regular Palestinians who voted in Hamas, who consistently don't want to have peace with Israel and send their children to blowup innocent people. Not to mention the glorification of death in Islamic culture. Peace? Maybe, when the Palestinians advance into the century.

I would like to add a personal observation to my previous comment. In 1968 my husband and I, young and newly married, visited Israel and some Israel friends who had served in the Six-Day war defending their country's right to exist. Our friends took us up to the Golan Heights to show us the Syrian bunkers where the Arabs sheltered while pointing their machine guns down the valley at Israeli farmers, who were exposed to the fire as they tended their crops, just sitting ducks for years as Syrians picked them off. Kibbutzim had to have underground shelters to protect them from unprovoked Arab gunfire. On this same trip our friend told us how much it meant to Israeli soldiers to be able, finally, to pray at the Western Wall. The Arabs had denied Jews access to pray at the wall since 1948. On our trip we were able pray there and to ascend to the Temple Mount to pay respects to the Muslim mosques, theDome of the Rock and El Aksa. In one of its many efforts to make peace, Israel subsequently voluntarily ceded administration of the Temple Mount to the Arabs, a grand gesture that backfired. Now Jews cannot go there. If the Arabs had control of the Western Wall, Jews would no longer be able to pray there again. So as I said in my previous post, there are two sides to every story, few heroes and many victims.

Time and again history well establishes that the Arabs and Palestinians were offered peace. They turned it down time and again. Now they want what they could have had 70 years ago, but still refusing to acknowledge and accept Israel as a Jewish state.

One last point: I was fifteen-years old when the Six Day War began. In the days leading up to it, the Arabs publicly declared that they would "drive the Jews into the sea."

The fact is that with the peace that Egypt and Jordan have made with Israel, and the de facto peace that the Saudis have made, the Arab world has had it with the Palestinian leadership, who has used its own people as pawns to enrich itself (Arafat died with hundreds of millions of dollars in the bank).

When the Palestinians one day realize what their leaders have done to them, they will turn the full fury of their wrath on them.

All at a horrific cost.

The author makes it clear to us why this conflict has continued for so long. Neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis are in the least disposed to give up their causes which are both to live free and independently in Palestine/Israel without those others. The attitude that the most recalcitrant advocates of an exclusive Jewish state in Palestine are so violent and bold because they are criminals is a bit hyperbolic. The Israelis who build and occupy the settlements in Palestinian lands would be expected to be nasty and brutal people because no considerate and peaceful people would do any such thing. But they are not criminals anymore than the Palestinians who condone violence to confront the Israeli policies which they find unjust. When people decide that they are going to have their way at any cost, they are going to end up treating opponents without a lot of care or respect. The Palestinians know that Palestine was their land until the British took control and supported a homeland for the Jews there. Later, most of it became Israel and Israel effectively controlled the entire of it after the Six Day War. His home will never be his under a Jewish state and a Palestinian state which is free and equal to it's neighbor Israel would not be acceptable to Israel so the conflict is likely to persist indefinitely.

There are two sides to every story, every tragedy. There are always more victims than heroes. I hope the writer of this article will read last week's opinion piece on the Arab-Israeli conflict with an open mind. This piece details the many, many concessions and efforts of Israel to make peace with the Arabs and Palestinians, whose goal has always been to annihilate Israel--and the continual rebuffs and repercussions that Israeli efforts received at the hands of those Arab and Palestinian leaders. There are no easy solutions but the responsibility lies with both parties, not just one.

Even Solomon would have been unable to split the baby on this one.

It's sad that two peoples who have so many experiences in common cannot find a way forward. The Jews were expelled from their land almost 2,000 years ago. They were the prototype for the long-term refugee-Spending at least 1,700 years as residents but not full citizens of a variety of countries. When they did finally get full rights in lands they had inhabited for much of those 1,700 years, their acceptance was followed by an industrial genocide the world had never seen before. Their attachment to the land is understandable. The Palestinians are also long term refugees away from their land, with an understandable attachment to it.

As recently as a decade or two ago, both sides have missed major opportunities, mostly driven by the politics of vocal minorities. The Israelis, upon the Hamas takeover of Gaza, could have made life good for those in the West Bank, showing the Gazans the benefits of peace.

The Israeli (and Egyptian) blockade is not an act of pique. Upon getting control of Gaza, Hamas destroyed infrastructure that had been bought for them, and with it their possibility of economic self sufficiency. Instead of using the concrete that passes through checkpoints to build schools, housing and hospitals, they built attack tunnels under the border. They could have built a civil society showing the Israelis the benefits of peace.

I wonder what will happen if the Canaanites come back for their land...

Unfortunately a true account from the Palestinian point of view. However their leadership missed a number of opportunities in 2000 and 2006 and many times before to bring an end to the suffering but where not brave to use the opportunity and chose hostility. I hope that Hanan Ashrawi will help them not to miss the next opportunity if it comes as I think it will be the last one before end badly for all of us.

The complicity of the United States in this will be remembered, along with slavery and the dispossession of Native Americans, as among the most egregious of our national sins.