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To: h.a. cherev

Of course I can.

My cousin and his family live in Alfe Menashe. If you don't know Israel that is in Samaria very near Kfar Saba where the 1967 borders made Israel very narrow indeed. It is also very near Qalqilya. My cousin was once administrator of Alfe Menashe and he became very good friends with the muchtar of the neighboring Arab village. The two families used to get together for both Jewish and Muslim holidays. They used to shop together in the Arab market in Qalqilya. There were really no problems.

When the first intifada broke out the muchtar and much of his family were murdered for being "too friendly" to the Israelis. A fence went up around Alfe Menashe.

I visited in 1996 (the visit where I decided to make aliya, BTW) and spent Shabbat with my cousin and his family. We took a long walk on a beautiful fall afternoon. On the wast side of the town you can see from Haifa in the north all the way to Ashdod in the south on a clear day.

On the other side of town we walked up to the fence and saw Palestinians working in the field below. My cousin, a strong, able man in his 50s was practically in tears. He started naming the people below. He said that was the muchtar's family, what was left of it anyway. He added that they are people just like us. All they want is to live in peace. This was from a settler, an Orthodox Jew, not a secular liberal in Haifa.

His experiences, my experiences, those of many Israelis I know who have good Palestinian friends who have no desire to kill us tell me my view is the correct one.

That does not mean there aren't many Palestinians who wish us dead. Of course there are. Their leadership clearly does. Of course, their leaders' entire raison d'etre is the conflict. What I am saying is that to say "all" Palestinians or even "most" Palestinians wish us dead and Israel destroyed is false. Far too many do, of course.


216 posted on 01/06/2006 4:08:08 PM PST by anotherview ("Ignorance is the choice not to know" -Klaus Schulze)
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To: anotherview
"What I am saying is that to say "all" Palestinians or even "most" Palestinians wish us dead and Israel destroyed is false. Far too many do, of course."

An interesting story. Those Arabs who truly wish peace should act accordingly. If there were enough of them to truly prove that "most" Arabs don't want us dead, then there would be no substance to my argument.

222 posted on 01/07/2006 3:04:25 PM PST by h.a. cherev
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