The Daily Star

The Daily Star


Home About Us Advertise Archives Forum Classifieds ePaper Live TV Contact us


Search



  Daily Star Sections
  Middle East

  Lebanon

  Middle East News
  Politics

  Business

  Editorial

  Opinion

 Interviews

  Readers' Letters

 




Reader's feedback published on 05/06/2010
The Daily Star is pleased to provide a forum for debate on a range of subjects, from local cultural activities to international politics.
Dozens, sometimes even hundreds, of letters fall into the editor’s mailbox daily. In order to keep the letters timely, The Daily Star generally produces a special letters section. When the influx of letters is particularly large, extra space is made available accordingly.
If you would like to submit a letter for publication, please remember to include your full name (first and last) and address, including city. The Daily Star typically only publishes letters under 400 words, and these are subject to editing. The Daily Star will not acknowledge unsolicited submissions.





Read more: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/letters.asp?edition_id=10#ixzz0q0VyXcRt
(The Daily Star :: Lebanon News :: http://www.dailystar.com.lb)



Patrick Galey
“Israel: Attackers will be sent ‘years backward’”
May 28, 2010
 
One thing which this recent crisis in the Middle East should show the world is that nothing has really changed in the region. There’s been talk of “peace, peace” for years now, and that’s about all it’s been – talk.
Now sudden destruction has come upon the area, as travail upon a woman with child. It was inevitable, just like a woman going into labor when she’s ready to deliver a child. The Israelis have remained the same as always. Oh, they’ve talked of peace, and they’ve thrown the Palestinians a few crumbs here and there.
They’ve let them control their little villages and rundown cities and slums, establish their own police force to arrest their own troublemakers, pick up their own garbage, and elect their own officials to supervise all that, but it’s all pretty meaningless and no skin off the Israeli nose. The Israelis didn’t want to run the dumps and dung heaps they let the Palestinians have anyway; it took too much time and energy away from their other work and was too much trouble.
They let the Palestinians have a few status symbols, things like their own airport and passports and government buildings here and there, but a lot of good it did the Palestinians! At the first sign of trouble, the Israelis closed down their airport so the Palestinians couldn’t fly out. They sealed off their cities and territories with tanks and troops so they couldn’t go in or out, so what good were their passports? And they sent helicopter gunships to bombard some of their government buildings, police stations and television stations with rockets, blasting them into oblivion.
So much for symbols of Palestinian sovereignty and concessions from the Israelis!
The poor Palestinians have been hoping for change for years, but there’s been very little change. They may seem to control their own little towns now, if you can call their run-down collection of huts and hovels such a thing, but at the first outbreak of violence they’re surrounded by Israeli tanks and snipers.
Even without violence, if they want to travel from one city to another, one place to another, they pass through Israeli roadblocks and suffer all sorts of indignities in the process.

Ted Rudow III, MA
Menlo Park, California, United States

International Herald Tribune and The Daily Star are available every morning in: Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Qatar, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman

Read more: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/letters.asp?edition_id=10#ixzz0q0VhbDg4
(The Daily Star :: Lebanon News :: http://www.dailystar.com.lb)