Sderot Israel » roadmap to peace

Letter To President Obama On Visit To Germany

Jerry Waxman — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 07:53:59 +0000

Open Letter To President Barack Obama During His Visit To Germany
by Jerry Waxman

To the Honorable Barack Obama
President of the United States of America

Dear Mr. President:

Yesterday you visited a concentration camp alongside Elie Wiesel, who had lived in that camp in his youth. I’m sure you didn’t need to visit a concentration camp to appreciate the struggle of the Jewish people throughout history. But I appreciate your commitment to history in insisting on actually visiting the place of so much suffering. As some historians have done, you tied the Holocaust to the birth of the State of Israel. This may or not be a true cause and effect, but there is a correlation.

I won’t elaborate on other correlations in history, just point them out as a matter of interest. From the time of the ancient Greeks up to modern times, any empire or nation that singled out the Jews for persecution soon lost the power they once had, and never fully regained it. The ancient Greeks took over Jerusalem, and soon afterward lost their empire. The same with the Romans. In 15th century Spain, the Inquisition targeted Jews, and Spain has never again enjoyed the status it had prior to that event. And in 20th century Germany — well, no need to elaborate.

The question, then, is where does America fit in? America’s revolt against the King of England was financed largely by a Jew. And Jewish men and women , since America’s earliest history, have enjoyed more or less equal standing with other citizens. America allowed Jews to immigrate when other countries were making life harder for them. And America has had the strongest friendly relationship with Israel since its early days as a Jewish state. I’d like to think that America’s rise as a world power, and its prosperity as a nation have something to do with its treatment of Jews and its relationship with Israel.

Today, encouraged by your speech in Cairo, America is expressing a more anti-Israel leaning than it has expressed in the past. Hopefully, you personally do not share the biases of those in the media and the public servants, past and present, who publicly point to Israel as the cause of problems in the middle east while overlooking historical facts showing Israel as the only nation in the region which has made any concrete efforts to attain peace.

After your visit to Buchenwald, journalists asked you questions, and your answers were encouraging, at least to me. They asked if the Jewish experience in the Holocaust should be instructive to Israelis in their treatment of Palestinians. You correctly brushed off the question and said there was no parallel. When asked about Israel’s commitments to the “road map”, you pointed out that everyone is focusing on Israel, while you also mentioned Palestinian commitments. And to another journalist you said you have no patience for those who would deny history.

Mr. President, are you aware that the president of the Palestinian Authority wrote a doctoral dissertation claiming that the Zionist movement inflated the tragedy of the Holocaust? Are you also aware that Mahmoud Abbas has never shown remorse for his involvement in terrorism, including the murders of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics?

Are you aware, Mr. President, that no Palestinian leader has ever shown sorrow or remorse when an Israeli is killed in a terrorist attack? In fact, Mahmoud Abbas continues to praise and celebrate the acts of violence against Israel. While, in the Palestinian Authority families of suicide bombers are given stipends, any Palestinian who helps Israelis to thwart terrorist attacks faces the death penalty, the same as a Palestinian who sells property to a Jew.

The Palestinian people are deserving of better lives, but they continue to appoint leaders who support violence against Israel. Furthermore, to indicate that the “intolerable” conditions under which the Palestinians live today are caused by Israel is to deny fact. The fighting between the different factions within the Palestinian community has caused greater damage and more frequent casualties than Israel’s army has.

In your speech in Cairo, you encouraged building up of Muslim people, their women, their children, their rights to education and pursuit of prosperity. And while you recognized the legitimacy of a Palestinian state, you said the United States does not recognize the legitimacy of Israeli settlements. You spoke of prior commitments to the roadmap.

You said nothing of how Israel has already made sacrifices beyond comprehension while the Palestinian Authority has done nothing. Isn’t this a sort of denial of history, Mr President? Isn’t recognition of a Palestinian state – which has never existed – and the denial of the Jews to build in their homeland, a reversal of truth?

Also in your speech, and again while you were in Germany, you spoke of not clinging to the past. Mistakes were made, and now we need to move on. While you spoke of America’s involvement in Iran and Iraq in this regard, the significance of your presence at a concentration camp alongside the Chancellor of Germany was not lost on me.

Ms. Merkel could finally say the same thing to the Jews of the world as you said to the Muslims about moving on from the past. And while the Holocaust and all the causes that led up to it must never be forgotten, the German Chancellor could now publicly join the call for the Jews to stop building in their homeland to make way for a state for the Palestinians – whose past and present leaders were and are admirers of Germany’s Fuehrer of the Third Reich.

Mr. President, one of the greatest mistakes of the last 16 years has been the attempted implementation of the road map to peace. It has not worked. It has resulted in escalated numbers of Palestinian casualties, and of Jewish casualties. Today, it is not realistic to believe that the Palestinian leaders will do what is needed for the roadmap to work. Mr. President, it is time to put the roadmap away and move on.

Peaceful relations between Israel and the Arab states may not come about in the foreseeable future. But Israel does have people and leaders who can, with support from friendly nations, implement solutions that will benefit all the people in the immediate region, Muslim, Christian, and Jew.

As president of the United States, you have a unique opportunity to help correct the wrongs that have been done in this region. It will take courage, and it will take reassessing some of the policies you have stated so far. But America’s interests are best served when it helps Israel to attain peace and prosperity for all the people within its borders.

Wishing you much success
Sincerely,

Jerry Waxman
Sderot, Israel

P.S. Your trip to Normandy is much appreciated in my family. Like your great uncle and your grandparents, my father and his brothers and sister served in the United States Armed Forces during World War II. As American Jews, they were especially motivated to serve America at that time.

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Technorati Tags: Barack Obama, Buchenwald, Cairo, Germany, Muslim, Palestinians, roadmap to peace

Letter To President Obama Following Cairo Speech

Jerry Waxman — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 06:46:59 +0000

Open Letter To President Barack Obama in the Wake of His Address in Cairo on 4 June 2009

by Jerry Waxman

To the Honorable Barack Obama
President of the United States of America

Dear Mr. President:

I'm writing to you from Sderot, where I live. You visited this town last year. In your speech in Cairo you referred indirectly to Sderot's unique disposition in the tragedy of "the roadmap." On the one hand I want to thank you - for speaking directly to the terrorists in front of a world audience, telling them that violence does them no good. On the other hand I want to tell you that you've let me down. You've let down the people of Sderot, where you talked about our right to defend ourselves.

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Your solutions to the problems which concern Israel are not solutions at all. They will not lead to a lasting peace. Logic, pragmatism, and lessons from history tell us so. I support your vision of a world at peace and harmony, and I respectfully have to tell you that the policy you have outlined does not represent change. It is the same as the policies of the two administrations before you. This does not lead to peace.

Mr. President, I want to tell you that I came to Sderot less than a year ago. I left a job and a pretty good and safe life to live here. I know of others who have come from different countries and different walks of life with similar stories. They left secure, comfortable lives to live in Israel. And although many of us here have nothing now - no jobs, no security, no homes, nothing - we are determined to stay in Israel - in Sderot and in every town, city, and village in the land of Israel. We are fulfilling an age old dream of our ancestors and ourselves to live in this land.

I don't believe there is another people or nation on earth that has a dream like this. I don't believe there is one man or woman amongst the thousands of Palestinian refugees who would come to live in this land if they had more secure options elsewhere. Those who have shot rockets into Sderot have no claims to this town. They don't want to live here. A plan to carve out a piece of territory for people who really don't dream of living there is not a plan that will succeed, Mr. Obama.

When you spoke at the university in Cairo, people applauded your comments when you spoke of restoring dignity to the Palestinian people. I wholeheartedly agree that the Palestinian people deserve to have the same freedoms and opportunities as all people deserve. But then when you admonished the extremists for shooting rockets into Jewish homes, there was no applause.

How do you explain that, Mr. Obama? How do you explain that the one thing the Muslim world could do to shake off the stigmas and the stereotypes - to collectively and vocally denounce the few terrorists among them - they won't do it?

Neither did your comments about recognizing Israel draw applause from your Cairo audience, even though Egypt's Anwar Sadat was the first leader of a major Muslim country to risk his life, and lose it, by reaching out to Israel.

What does that tell you, Mr. Obama? If Egyptians show no pride in their country's historical peace agreement with Israel, can you expect other Arab and predominantly Muslim countries to open their skies to Israeli planes, and open their ports to Israeli goods, and open their minds to treating Jewish people with the same dignity and respect as all people deserve?

There is no connection to Jewish settlements, Mr. Obama. Jews have lived in Hebron and Gush Etzion long before there were ever Palestinian refugees. If there are Palestinians who dream of living in the territories of Judea and Samaria, there should be no reason they couldn't live there in peace with the Jewish settlers. Your call to Israel to stop Jewish settlements to form a separate state for Palestinians is not a call for peace. It is a plan that has failed, and can only fail again. There is no chance that it will lead to peace and prosperity for anyone, Muslim, Christian, or Jew.

That the Palestinian people have suffered there is no argument. That the Palestinian people deserve to have better lives, I totally agree. That much of their suffering began at the time that Jews declared Israel a state there is no denial of the correlation. But to suggest that Israel is the main cause of their suffering is to deny facts, and ignore truth. And to suggest a separate state for Palestinians is not a logical conclusion at all. As a peaceful solution to a problem, it doesn't merit consideration if only because it is not something the Palestinian people have ever struggled for or shown an interest in.

While the comparisons are not exactly warranted, Mr. President, please consider the oppressed minorities in the United States. The African Americans don't have a separate state within U.S. borders. The Latin Americans have not demanded a separate state. Nor have the Asian Americans. What would be the policy of the United States were the Muslim Americans to make demands for a separate state within the borders of the U.S.?

Mr. Obama, I do not join those Israelis who would respond to your speech with sarcasm or mockery. I do not join the Jewish activists who would use anger and invective against you as a way to thwart your goals. I am an American who supports you in your efforts to do what is in America's best interests. I am a friend who wants you to avoid doing things that are not in America's best interests and not in your best interests.

The "roadmap" is such a thing. I had hopes, in my support for you as a world leader, that you would see that the roadmap does not provide a pragmatic solution to any legitimate concerns of anybody who lives in the region. I had hopes that you would be more imaginative and act with more intelligence than your predecessor on these issues. I had very high hopes that you would act as a true leader and speak the real truth, though it may fly in the face of what other leaders have said, and put this roadmap aside to work out more desirable, more feasible, and more attainable goals in cooperation with affected parties in the region.

Until now, you have let me down. And while nobody may see it yet, you have let America down. Please consider these things that I have written, Mr. Obama, and be the true leader that Americans voted for. Distance yourself from failed agendas including the roadmap, and rely more on truth.

Respectfully,

Jerry Waxman
Sderot Israel

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