To the editor:
Parliament members in most countries can be expected to try to work for the best interests of the country they were elected to serve. Ayman Odeh, a member of the Israeli Knesset and author of the op-ed "Israel celebrates its independence, we mourn our loss," demonstrates that in this, as in many other ways, Israel is unique. Odeh clearly works against the interests of Israel and supports the very people trying to destroy us. I can't think of another country that would countenance such behavior by one of its legislators.
I would like to point out one of Odeh's many fundamental errors. In his very first sentence, Odeh writes that the establishment of Israel, which was actually the reestablishment of Jewish sovereignty in our homeland, represented a "catastrophe" for Palestinians. Aside from the fact that the Arabs living in the area didn't adopt the Palestinian identity until decades later, it was not Israel's reestablishment that was a catastrophe for the Arabs; rather it was the Arab refusal to accept the United Nations Partition Plan, one which gave them nearly 90 percent of the territory of the Palestine Mandate (the 78 percent of Palestine east of the Jordan and nearly half of the remainder west of the Jordan), their losing the war they launched to destroy Israel, and their being used as pawns in the conflict which continues to this day because they refuse to make peace.
To end what they call the "Nakba," the Palestinian Arabs need to give up their dream of destroying Israel and decide, finally, to try living in peace.
Sincerely,
Alan Stein