J

an 24, p. 7

While the history of the world is moving decisively toward a culture of inclusion, diversity and pluralism, Israeli politics seems to challenge history by moving in the opposite direction — a direction of exclusion and a unilateral self–righteous monopoly of geography, demography, history, archeology and culture.

This is especially true in Jerusalem, where Israelis are desperately trying to establish a Jewish capital for Israel and Jewish people worldwide, excluding the centuries-old presence and deep-rooted heritage of Palestinian, Arab, Muslim and Christian residents. (By Nicola Nasser, Bir Zeit, Palestine)

Your comments:

The reality is that the PLO and Hamas have not just denied Israel’s right to be a Jewish state, but denied Israel’s right to exist.

Many other people have expressed similar feelings towards the Jewish people as a whole.

Nothing can be accomplished while this persists. Israel must stop building settlements in occupied territories and scale back or completely remove the ones that are currently there.

But the big problem is the Arabs who feel the need to hate Jews and deny their right to exist.

To anyone who disagrees with this: your argument is illegitimate because the processor in your computer was almost certainly made in Israel.

We all benefit from Israel’s existence and the ingenuity of the Jewish people, without whom we would have no nuclear power, no psychology, no Hollywood and be poorer in everything.

Jews are over-represented in the list of Nobel Prize winners in all categories. Dozens have won such awards, while only 0.5 percent of people (around 30 million) consider themselves to be Jewish.

Arabs, Muslims and Christians must get over their blind and ignorant hatred of Jews and focus a bit more on themselves. Israel is better than any of its neighboring countries to live in.

If Syria, Lebanon and others tried half as hard to make their own corrupt countries better, instead of trying to destroy Israel and convincing their people to hate Israel, what great nations they could be.

Kevin

The history is much deeper, Kevin. Jews have had a long history of living in civilized societies, when compared to most of Israel’s neighbors, and they have migrated to Western civilizations early on.

But that does not make them better than others. Their behavior is totally intolerable and eventually leads to the mess of religious war. The politicians are short sighted, both in Israel and the United States.

There will be a time when the Palestinians’ seed of hatred grows to such an extent that only the total destruction of a race will satisfy their thirst for revenge.

Then, there will not be bickering between them but a total war against two religions.

The ignorant and shortsighted Americans and their leaders will be blindly support the brutality of the Israelis. That will be a war of civilizations.

To clarify, I am a Christian.