ISRAEL: The views of Yury Avnety

Miles Seeley, who knows the Arab world very well and laments US lack of understanding of it, writes: "You cannot endorse the views of Avneri, but I can and do. I have tried to explain this to fellow Americans dozens of times in the past 30 years. Unfortunately, our President and our Congress, tuned as always to the Jewish vote, don't get it. Many Europeans do, and we dismiss their views. It's not just that endorsing Sharon and his "incursions" infuriates the entire Arab world, it's that we put ourselves in a morally indefensible position. I am, I freely admit, biased, since I lived in that area and had dozens of Palestinian friends, and I learned to appreciate them and their views. Most importantly, I spent some time in the refugee camps and saw how living for decades in that environment breeds hatred and martyrs. To me, it is idiotic to think that brute military force will solve the problem for Israel".

Ronald Hilton - 4/20/02