Reality Check

Submitted by Rebecca Moulds (United States), Feb 26, 2009 at 14:41

I fully agree with Daniel Pipes about the reasons for not expelling Palestinians from the West Bank. Not only is it impossible to do, but it is morally wrong.

Imagine what my grandparents would have felt if they were told they had to leave the United States because they were Italian, or because they had a different faith, or had different political leanings. My grandfather was an Italian Jew and my grandmother an Italian Roman Catholic, living in a small community made up of Italian and Polish immigrants, about one hundred years ago in the Chicago area. Although they assimilated as much as was possible for them and learned English, they still maintained their ethnic roots, spoke their own dialects, kept some of the habits of their motherlands.

Sometimes they were persecuted by indigenous and ignorant Americans who could not tolerate strangers in their midst. I realise that Italian and Polish immigrants are not Palestinians, but ethnic cleansing of any sort should be abhorrent to any society that claims to be a democracy as Israel does. Israel must show itself to be of a higher calibre and not bend to the whims of those such as Meir Kahane and others of his backward thinking. Surely it is up to the next government in Israel to finally come up with a logical and humane solution to the Palestinian people.

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