Our View

  • The Answer Lies with Us
    Aug 13, 2009 - 06:37:00 PM
    Two peoples live in the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. One group has freedom, mobility and control over natural resources. The other group has seen its freedom taken away, its mobility limited, its access to resources and farmland denied. One group has water to drink, nourish lawns and irrigate crops. The other group cannot reach wells that have sustained their families for hundreds of years. One group drives unhindered on lighted, segregated roadways that bypass the ghettos they create; the other learns to do without the sunset and the breeze as giant grey walls rise around them.

    A monumental crime is taking place on our watch. Yet this is not some distant conflict over which we have no control. We are deeply involved, through our taxes that arm Israel, through our investments in companies that profit from the persecution of Palestinians, and through our silence, which allows this to continue.

    Every person reading this has a role to play in ending the occupation and bringing peace to the region. As long as we make money off the persecution of Christians and Muslims, and ignore the voices of Jews calling for change, we cannot claim to want peace. As long as our tax dollars support the building of settlements and the theft of Palestinian land, we are responsible.

    Many people of every faith are calling for an end to Israel’s displacement of Palestinians, which for 60 years has lain at the heart of the instability in the Middle East. This affects America’s security, and our failure to respond endangers us all.

Other Views on Israel & Palestine

  • Maan News Agency: Gaza govt: Settler attackers may not be ...
    Mar 13, 2011 - 01:47:54 PM
    Palestinians may not be responsible for killing a family of five Israelis in Itamar settlement overnight Friday, the Gaza government said Sunday. Israeli authorities immediately blamed Palestinians for the attack, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused the Palestinian Authority of "daily incitement" against Israel in his response to the killings. However, Gaza government spokesman Taher An-Nunu said the Israeli government should not rule out the possibility that the attack was perpetrated by Israeli criminals.
  • A Hasty Response
    Mar 13, 2011 - 01:39:29 PM
    Israeli newspaper headlines proclaimed that Palestinians were beasts for the attack on a family of settlers last week, without any mention of recent attacks by settlers on Palestinians, which have occurred with increasing frequency. These settler attacks and the settlements themselves on Palestinian land have created tremendous anger and endanger both Israelis and Palestinians.
  • The international community's final test, by Mustafa Barghouti
    Oct 24, 2010 - 11:41:09 AM
    Negotiations between two unequal parties cannot succeed. Success in Palestinian-Israeli negotiations requires a reasonable balance of power, clear terms of reference and abstention of both sides from imposing unilateral facts on the ground. None of that existed in the talks that were re-initiated in September.
  • Resisting Temptation - Curtis Doebbler
    Aug 21, 2010 - 07:50:32 PM
    Perhaps more than any other time in this holy month of Ramadan, the Palestinian negotiators must find the courage to reject the false temptations of the West and to act in the best interests of the Palestinian people. If they cannot do it now, they may never be able to.
  • Negotiations must be about substance, not form
    Jul 28, 2010 - 06:32:40 AM
    Palestinians view the latest Israeli push for direct talks as an attempt to shift the focus from the issues that must be resolved to the form of discussions. While Israelis want to appear more open to progress by agreeing to direct negotiations, Israel's positions on core issues have not moved, and the spread of settlements, along with demolition of Palestinian homes, continues.
  • Washington's state of denial claims yet more casualties - The National ...
    Jul 12, 2010 - 10:59:06 AM
    "Where once it was deemed prudent for the US to mediate between Israel and its Arab neighbours, today the requirements of political survival appear to require a parroting of Israel’s own positions – as President Barack Obama’s capitulation to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week demonstrated."
  • Michael Oren's curious understanding of friendship
    Jul 02, 2010 - 06:42:26 PM
    US support for Israel is indeed unshakeable, but friendship goes both ways. Rather than wasting time lamenting the supposed shifts and rifts in the US-Israel relationship, the Netanyahu government should stop the provocations and the political machinations and start acting like a real friend and ally. It can do this by demonstrating a real commitment to the Obama Administration's efforts to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Netanyahu's visit to the White House next week is a good place to start.
  • A Special Place in Hell / Tea Party Jews: Betraying U.S. and Israel at ...
    Jul 02, 2010 - 02:52:32 PM
    Ever wonder what a future America might look like if the Tea Party took over? Try today's Israel. That distinctive brew of left-baiting, Obama-hating, poorly veiled racism, clergy-driven jingoism, clergy-fanned derision of the Supreme Court, the Luddite insertion of anti-government bile where an ideology should go, a majority which feels victimized and discriminated against and threatened by minorities of indeterminate legal status – it's all here. It just speaks Hebrew.
  • A bi-delusional state
    Jul 02, 2010 - 02:47:31 PM
    This land will either be home to two nation-states for two peoples, or one nation-state - a Palestinian Arab state. The concept of a nation-state is not going to disappear from here; it would behoove us to make sure that Israel doesn't disappear.
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