Thank you

Submitted by Ron Thompson (United States), May 16, 2013 at 21:01

Bruria Rimoni,

I appreciate your generous comments. I remember with great pleasure my trip to Israel in 2005, which I had resolved to make after 9/11. I don't know if it was a pilgrimage exactly, but I certainly was no mere tourist in going everywhere except Eilat to take in History present and past. A year later came the short, sharp war with Hezbollah. I remember disagreeing strongly with the majority opinion in the Western media that Israel had been 'brutal' and 'disproportionate' in its destruction of infrastructure. I felt they followed the strong Shermanesque strategy ( from our Civil War) that destroying more property meant killing fewer people, with the additional security benefit in Israel's case of enhanced Deterrence, at least for awhile. If I may make a slight defense of one comment, I did not say the hatred started in 1948, but that the violence that began to get the world's attention then. For I agree with you that violence was at the heart from the very beginning of its successes.

Ron Thompson

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