Voicemail (October 19, 2006)

n his withering attack on Israel, Dane Baker’s reply to Moshe Siman-Tov (Letters section, August 10 issue), contained not a single positive statement about the Jewish
state. He’s “concerned” that U.S. tax dollars support policies that don’t meet with his approval. However, almost the same level of annual U.S. support is sent to Egypt for military purchases and economic assistance (Charles Levinson, “$50 billion later, taking stock of US aid to Egypt,” Christian Science Monitor, April 12, 2004). I don’t believe Egypt is worthy of our aid because it’s an authoritarian and repressive regime.

Nonetheless, I support assistance to both Israel and Egypt because it advances U.S. foreign policy goals in a strategically important and volatile part of the world.

Israel is a parliamentary democracy with a free press, limited government, an independent judiciary and a nation in which Jews, Muslims and Christians live peacefully under the rule of law. It’s a nation of world-class universities, Nobel Laureates in literature and science, and a model of what other Middle Eastern countries can become if its neighbors stopped trying to “erase it from the map” and welcomed it as an equal partner to improve the lives of all peoples living in the region.

Baker’s choice of Noam Chomsky as a quotable source for the present conflict between
Israel and Hezbollah tipped his hand. In May 2006, Chomsky traveled to Lebanon and embraced Nabil Qauq, Hezbollah leader in southern Lebanon, who took Chomsky and
his wife on a tour. During the trip, Chomsky appeared on Hezbollah’s TV station, Al Manar, where he not only praised Hezbollah but told the viewers that “the U.S. is a leading terrorist state” (WorldNetDaily.com, “Chomsky hails Hezbollah on TV,” May 17, 2006). Chomsky’s anti-Semitic credentials match his anti-Israel rhetoric. He wrote the introductory chapter to neo-Nazi sympathizer and Holocaust denier Robert Faurrison’s book (Noam Chomsky, “Some Elementary Comments on The Rights of Freedom of Expression,” in Robert Faurisson, Memoire en defense). In this essay, Chomsky defended Faurisson’s freedom of speech to rewrite history and promote his bigoted views. And, of course, that’s fi ne and dandy. However, Chomsky, never known to suffer from writer’s cramp, was silent on the merits of Faurisson’s work. Chomsky rationalized the Al Qaeda terrorist attacks on New York and Washington and is a defender of Pol Pot and his genocidal Khmer Rouge regime (Keith Windschuttle, “The hypocrisy of Noam Chomsky,” The New Criterion, Vol. 21, No. 9, May 2003). The anti-Israel bias of the San Francisco Chronicle, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch is apparent to anyone who reads their editorials or visits their websites.

I was disappointed to read Dane Baker’s reply in the Knoxville Voice. He’s obviously a good writer, but Baker’s talents would better serve the Voice and Knoxville if he took the time to present both sides of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The hatred Hezbollah, Hamas, their sponsors and allies have for Israel is so profoundly overpowering to the extreme that coexistence does not appear possible. Why else would
these groups be so willing to strap bombs to their children and send them to murder other
innocents as suicide bombers? Golda Meir once said the conflict will never end until they love their children as much as we love ours.

In light of the ongoing conflict, increasingly so since the early part of the last century; and despite many cease-fires, negotiated territory realignments and relinquishments, it appears peace and stability in the region may come only if one side unconditionally surrenders to the other as a result of military action. Even if Hezbollah, Hamas, et al. could manage a military victory, unconditional surrender by Israel may not be acceptable to them or us, inasmuch as it would equate to total annihilation and extermination of their people and the Jewish state. And, apparently, most of the rest of the world is not going to allow the Jews to cause enough death and destruction to their fanatical enemies to cause them to give up. So, where does that leave us—and them? The hell that has existed for both these groups of forlorn people will probably continue unabated—conflicts, wars, violence and death—the current talks at the UN don’t appear headed toward any sustainable solution—say, whatever happened to UN Resolution 1559 anyway? Perhaps, if Iran is able to build a nuclear device and furnish it to their proxies, and they use it on Israel as the Iranian leader so fervently promises and desires, then Israel’s retaliatory response (assuming they possess a few hundred nuclear warheads themselves) would assure the destruction of Iran, Syria, a few million people, and we may then finally have peace. Or at least until each side could rearm.