Not necessarily so

Submitted by Seth Johnston, M.D. (United States), Jan 10, 2008 at 09:08

"Olmert's delusional thinking is borne of weakness, but he is not deluding the majority of Israelis who know that the Jewish state of Israel will have to persevere without either recognition nor acceptance by the Arabs. Ultimately, the Arabs will either accept Israel in the hearts for their own reasons or no longer be the Arabs that they are today."

I believe that Mr. Olmert's optimism may or may not reflect "current reality": He may well be thinking of a future time. In the last sentence quoted, I believe you meant "and" not "or". To accept Israel and Israel as a Jewish State, they need to relinquish the concept of "Oomah", namely the geopolitical concept that Israel and it's lands belong to Islam (as well as, perhaps, the rest of the world), and accept other religions and cultures as being valid. That is a long range educational project and may or may not be attainable.

Most certainly, though, it requires people to relinquish all forms of violence and terrorism and more fundamentally the perhaps innate concept of "I can win" and the egoism tied to that. Good luck.

As a species, we seem incapable of just letting go of the concept that we can control people, situations and outcomes. In fact, we control nothing at all and the sooner we come to that realization, the sooner peace will come.

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