Don't blame Israelis for Middle East unrest
Farid Wissa (letter, March 21) has this backward: Israel isn't the obstacle to peace. Since Israel vacated Gaza in 2005, the number of rockets launched from Gaza at Israeli civilians has increased. Israel hasn't responded proportionately.
Pre-1967 borders? Ehud Barak offered Arafat almost all of that. Arafat's response was the intifada.
Ethnic cleansing? Again, backward: There are still Israeli Muslims (even in the Knesset) but no Jews living under the Palestinian Authority because the Arabs practiced ethnic cleansing on Jews in 1948.
Compensation? The number of Jewish refugees in Israel driven out of Arab countries exceeds the number of Palestinians who left Israel, yet Syria, Iraq, Yemen, etc., never compensated Jews.
Israel faces a double standard, getting criticized more than countries with worse human rights records. Why is Israel the only country in the U.N. that can't serve on the Security Council? As Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union of Reform Judaism, put it: How patient would we be if civilians in Michigan were dodging missiles from Canada? A whole lot less patient than Israel has been.
Steven Taub
Greensboro