To the editor:
There was nothing surprising in Raja Shehadeh's "A Palestinian Neighbor Responds," ostensibly a "review" of Yossi Klein Halevi's, "Letters to my Palestinian neighbor."
Halevi wrote an incredibly conciliatory book. While written to help Palestinian Arabs understand our Israeli history and perspective, because while Jews and Israelis have been inundated with the Palestinian narrative, Halevi believes no serious attempt has been made to help the Palestinian Arabs understand our history and our connection to Eretz Yisrael. Halevi believes that if the Arabs recognized the depth of our connection to the Land of Israel, they might finally be willing to join us in making the compromises and sacrifices we both need to make in order to end our conflict.
Shehadeh made clear that he, for one, insists of keeping his mind closed, rejecting truth, history and reality while demanding we take full responsibility for the conflict they started and insist on perpetuating. Typically, he falsely accuses Halevi of insisting Palestinian Arabs embrace what he calls our "narrative," while essentially insisting on our accepting theirs. He also blames the conflict on our allegedly making it physically impossible for the Palestinian to exercise their "right to self-determination," despite the fact that we agreed to that even before we reestablished our Jewish state, that they had every opportunity during the period between 1948 and 1967 when the currently disputed territories were completely controlled by Arabs but showed no interest in exercising any such right, and that we've repeatedly offered them their own state since then.
He writes that the problem with Halevi's letters is that they "seem like lectures," which they're not, but that's just what Shehadeh's "review" reads like. Shehadeh falsely accuses Halevi of precisely what he's guilty. This mirrors the larger conflict: the Palestinian Arabs, who have waged a campaign to destroy us, starting long before they assumed the identity of "Palestinians," continually falsely accuse us of doing precisely what they are doing.
No, there was nothing surprising in Shehadeh's "review," but it does make even clearer that peace awaits the birth of a new generation of Palestinian Arabs which does not share the prejudices, hatreds and closed minds of the current generation, but rather wishes for its children better, more peaceful lives.
Sincerely,
Alan Stein