A LETTER TO CBC RADIO'S SUNDAY EDITION
Why no peace in the Middle East? Your series on the subject explains it about as well anything on offer, but not because you explained anything.
How few facts, especially relevant ones, are found in your series. An individual from another planet, observing the Middle East, might wonder what you and your guests were discussing.
Last week in discussing Syria, you might as well have been using press releases from Tel Aviv. Syria is a complex and interesting country, typically demonized in our press, and you offered nothing, literally nothing, to redress the balance and generate understanding.
This week you had Norman Spector, a man whose ugly public comments on Belinda Stronach one might think disqualify him from using our public airwaves.
Spector is perhaps even less qualified to speak on the Middle East despite his having been an ambassador. Spector writes about Israel's claims in terms of Hebrew Scripture. For most of the world's people, this makes as much sense as modern Greece claiming Turkey owing to the Iliad.
If you can quote Scripture as authority in Middle East affairs, you can justify anything, including killing all non-Jewish residents, for that is what the Biblical Hebrews were enjoined to do, over and over.
Personal religious views and 2,500 year-old books have no place in international affairs. After all, if Israel wishes to be regarded as a state like any other state, then it must behave as we expect other states to behave.
There are dozens of hard factual matters you might have discussed, but you ignored them. Here is just one example: the Palestinians have struggled to create a coalition government, yet Israel instantly, high-handedly rejects even talking to it, claiming it must first be recognized by Hamas. Why not examine this unbalanced demand?
The United States failed to recognize the Soviet Union for decades, it has failed to recognize the government of Cuba for forty years, and it has used recognition as a diplomatic tool or weapon many, many times.
If the Palestinians were to recognize Israel, what would they be recognizing, Israel refusing even to define its borders?
It is not merely a technical question. Israel and her supporters have starved the Palestinians of funds which legally are theirs simply because Israel despises Hamas. Now recall, Israel, years ago, secretly funded Hamas to create opposition for Arafat.
Yet when Hamas was cleanly elected in a fair election, Israel not only refused even to speak to it, it arrested much of the elected government, threatened members with assassination (a serious threat, Israel having assassinated many previously), and seized funds which did not belong to it. What other government in the world could behave this way and be supported by the press?
What incentive does Israel have to make any meaningful compromise when it is steadfastly supported in such unfairness? None of course, ergo the problem.
But, no, on Sunday Edition we get attitudes, platitudes, generalities, and Specter.
Post script: there is not an Arab country unwilling to grant full recognition to Israel in return for a fair peace.
