Against a backdrop of terror attacks being perpetrated by Hamas, Israeli and Palestinian leaders are currently meeting in Washington DC for the first direct talks in almost two years. Yesterday, I was asked by a producer at the BBC World Service radio show “The World Today” to address Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. She asked me to speak from the heart, sharing my thoughts on the current situation and letting them know what I thought needed to be done.
The text below is the “letter” I wrote to President Abbas and Prime Minister Netanyahu, which I recorded and sent to my producer at the BBC last night. It aired shortly thereafter. This piece was written specifically for the BBC World Service radio show “The World Today“.
If you’d like to listen to the recording, go to this link and click the “Listen Now” link. Go to the 20:35 minute mark or so, ignore the fact that the presenter gets my first name wrong TWICE, and try to remember that I’m a writer and not a radio person.
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Dear President Abbas and Prime Minister Netanyahu,
In the grand scheme of things, I am not important. I’m an Israeli, a writer, a wife… Right now, though, I speak to you as a mother – a mother whose greatest desire is simply to raise her son in an atmosphere that doesn’t breed hatred and fear.
Mr. Netanyahu, I am so, so tired of the actions of your government, which seemingly serve only to further isolate this country from the rest of the world. Trying to fix the situation with eloquent words doesn’t work. The problems don’t lie in the explanations, but rather in the actions themselves. Nobody believes that we are the victims anymore; they mock us for continuing to act as though we are. We cannot continue to say that we want peace when the actions we show the world are so clearly to the contrary. The occupation is eroding our collective moral compass.
Mr. Abbas, I don’t envy your position as leader of a fractured people without a country. That being said, when you and your colleagues continue to blame Israel for all of your problems, when it seems that you prefer not to take responsibility for the predicaments of the Palestinian people, it does nothing to build any trust on the Israeli side.
I do not pretend to understand all of the fine nuances of the security situation, nor do I entertain any illusions regarding the achievement of a solution. All I know is that the current situation is untenable. We need you to be strong leaders. We need you to make courageous, difficult, even painful decisions; decisions that will likely provoke outrage in certain sectors. Photo opportunities and joint press conferences are useless if nothing comes out of them.
When it comes down to it, I don’t have high hopes for this current round of direct negotiations. Experience has made me cynical, and neither of you seems terribly enthusiastic to be there. I dare you to surprise me and prove me wrong, if not for me, then at least for my son and his generation on both sides of the fence.
I am also a young mother living in Israel. I have to tell you that there is nothing that Israel can do besides totally forfeit the whole country (and even that won’t be enough) in order to make the world happy. This is just the way it is.
What I don’t like about how the government is handling things is that the PM is not saying we did enough, it’s THEIR turn. They MUST at the very least recognize that Israel is a Jewish state. They want the Israelis to freeze the “settlements” and withdraw 300,000 Jews from an area which they did not care to make into a state when they had the chance in November of 1947, bet 1947-1967 and again when it was offered by Olmert. The right of return should not be on the burden of the Israelis at all. It was not their decision to send all those ppl out of their homes. It was the Arab high court in Cairo, who had the consensus of the Arab countries who told them to leave so that they can wipe out the fledgeling state!!
Had there not been bombs etc etc. there could have actually been feasability to make a state for two nations to live in harmony. Rabbis even say that if it is for Pikuach Nefesh (to save a life) you can withdraw. However, each and every single time the Israelis withdrew and did more concessions we were treated to killings. You could say that there are more deaths on the other side but that is because the Israelis take proper precautions while the Arabs put their civilians in harms way.
I would like to write my own letter telling the PM that he does not need the world at all! There was an Israel long before there was a US or any other country. We have been around for over 3,000 years.
G-d took us out of Egypt and sustained us in the desert for 40 years without the US. G-d brought us into the land of Israel without the US. etc etc etc.. The US nor any other country split the Red sea, brought plagues on the Egyptians etc etc. We don’t need some money greedy country leaders to accept us.. They never will.
Ita,
After reading what I wrote in this post (and perhaps reading other posts that I’ve written), I’m sure you realize that we don’t really see eye to eye on most of these issues. The situation is simply not as black and white as you portray it to be.
While I’m not going to offer my opinions of your comment on a point-by-point basis, I will touch on a few of them. First, while it’s true that some Arabs left at the suggestion of other Arab leaders in the region, many were indeed driven out of their homes by Israeli forces. That being said, I don’t believe that there should be a Palestinian right of return to Israel if a two-state solution is reached.
I strongly disagree with your assertion that Israel doesn’t “need” the world at all. We are part of the world, and we can’t – nor should we – ignore its existence. We cannot simply opt to play by our own rules and pretend that this is acceptable. As a member of the global community, we have responsibilities, and while I agree that there is often a double-standard when it comes to judging Israel as opposed to judging other countries, that still doesn’t give us free reign to blatantly disregard what is happening around us or absolve us of our responsibilities, especially vis a vis the nation that we’ve been subjugating since 1967 and the Arab minority living in Israel, whose quality of life is significantly lower than the quality of life for most Jewish Israelis.
Your last paragraph leads me to think that you are living in the biblical land of Israel, and not the current state of Israel in which we now find ourselves. Recycling ancient stories in order to show why we should shirk our responsibilities is not realistic. There are two narratives (at least!) at play here and two peoples claiming the same land. If each people continues to be mired in its own narrative and refuses to compromise, we will never be able to move in any positive direction. And, while I don’t claim to know how we can get there, I embrace the need to be practical and move forward, because the Palestinians are no less deserving of their own country as we are.
As far as not “needing some money greedy country leaders to accept us”, I disagree with that as well. Most of the people I know who live in Israel want to be accepted by the rest of the world and don’t want to live in a pariah nation that is reviled by everyone. I want be part of the world community, and that isn’t likely to happen as long as we continue to give the world the finger. There will always be unfair double-standards and we will always be judged more harshly, but that doesn’t mean that we still shouldn’t strive to be the best that we can be, instead of opting for giving the world the finger because we think they all hate us.
I hear what you are saying. I agree that we can’t just ignore the world . What I meant was that we don’t need the monetary aid from the US etc. We do need to work with the world, but we can’t let the world walk all over us and have us chop our country in pieces just to suit their purposes.The world has such standards of human rights when it comes to Israel but somehow does not go into the human rights of the Israelis that are being violated on a daily basis.
I am not living in Biblical Israel. I know the reality of being in the State of Israel. However, the world thinks that they can make up laws and that we just all have to take them at face value whether or not they are valid or not. The world ignores the blatant human rights violations of Hamas on the Palestinians as well as the Israelis. Note that I say that the human rights of the Palestinians are being violated as well! They are not being brought up to want peace, but to wipe out Jews and yearn to take the whole Israel away.
You also have to realize that the Palestinian standard of life is not 100 percent the responsibility of the Israelis eventhough they are the “occupier”. They give them basic needs like food, water etc. The Israeli Arabs are treated in some ways BETTER than the Jew. The Israeli Arab is treated no different than a chareidi Jew.
I happen to think that if the Palestinians weren’t hostile but really a peaceful and respectful people there could have been a chance at even a bi-national state.
Their constant calling of the Jewish history as false or the idea that 3,000 years of history don’t matter is not right. The world expects us to recognize them but they do not recognize Israels right to exist as a Jewish state. The Israelis have done so much while the Palestinians just sit and demand. Why don’t they demand compensation equally from the Arab nations as well as the Israelis for chasing them out? Why do the Israelis have to bare the entire burden.
I am tired of the Arabs violating the human rights of the Palestinians as well as the Israelis. They use the Palestinians as pawns for the last 60 years. They do not care for their quality of life . They make it worse and worse each day. Hamas steals the supplies and then sells it to the highest bidder. The poor get nothing.
But, you should know that the only way for the Jewish people to survive is to remember that there is G-d and have faith that HE is really the only one who will sustain us in anything.
We just had Rosh Hashana and Yom kippur where our judgement for the whole year has been determined. We could do everything the world wants, work really hard to make money ,but in the end of the day it’s not all the effort that we make but our faith that makes it work.
We have to work with the world but they have no right to walk all over us and treat us like dirt. We deserve to be treated like the other nations and we aren’t.
Hi Liza,
I have tried to get to the places where your name was mispronounced, but BBC says: “Sorry, this programme is not available to play.”…
They only keep them up for a week I believe. I’ll see if I can find it elsewhere on the site and update the link. And, if you’re truly desperate to hear my voice (though I can’t imagine why that might be the case), I can send you the original clip that I sent to them.
A beautifully articulate letter, I have just discovered your blog and am relieved to hear this voice online, where there is so much of the ‘black’ and ‘white’ of this situation. I look forward to reading much more of your thoughts and views on Israel and life.
Thanks, Zoe, and sorry for the late response to your comment! I couldn’t agree with you more, regarding there being so much black and white. I used to write about politics and current events a lot more, but I just burned out after a while because I couldn’t take it anymore! I still do it sometimes, though, and do what I can to present this face of Israel.