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Letter
Dear CUNY Advocate,
Re: “The World’s Largest Prison” by Andrew Kennis, December 2003 Issue
It is the tragedy of political leadership or the lack thereof for more than fifty years that has brought about the conflict between Arab and Jew as we witness it today in the Middle East.
It should be acknowledged that every overture of peace offered to Israel’s neighbors, with the exception of Egypt and Jordan, has been rejected out of hand because of the misguided notion that only a Palestinian state should exist between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
It is particularly sad that Mr. Kennis did not visit Israel on his fact-finding mission. It would have helped him get a more balanced picture of this ongoing tragedy.Sincerely yours,
Joann Abrams Rosoff
Kennis responds:
Joann Rosoff’s letter reflects a widely held notion in left-liberal circles that only one of the two warring sides in Western Asia is rejectionist in terms of their efforts towards peace. Sometimes ‘supporters of Israel’ even go so far as to advocate the racist idea that only Israel has a right to self-determination.
The reality of the matter is far from that, with a very long diplomatic history of US and Israeli rejectionism having been exhaustively documented by scholars such as the social critic Noam Chomsky, the late Edward Said and analysts at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, such as Seth Ackerman.
Rosoff’s assumption that I did not visit Israel during my trip was false. While I spent some three weeks in Palestine during my trip, I was in Israel for two weeks as well. In fact, I conducted several interviews while I was in Israel, which can be found online at Indymedia.Sincerely,
Andrew Kennis