Reply #26: I'd have the Israeli government do several things

[Ken Burch]

1)End the economic blockade. If it hasn't achieved anything by now it's not going to. Look at Cuba for an example of how well tactics like that actually work;

2)Make it clear that a Palestinian state in Gaza and ALL of the West Bank is going to happen, and soon;

3)Start a reconciliation program reaching out to ordinary Palestinians. This program would include compensation for property loss(and apologies for senseless acts like the destruction of over 120,000 Palestinian olive trees)and an acknowledgment that, while Jews have a real connection to these lands, Palestinian Arabs have an equal connection, and a "truth and reconciliation" commission along South African lines, as well as an admission that Palestinian resistance was NOT based on "hatred of Jews" and that it was never fair to equate the Palestinians with the historical villains of European antisemitism;

4)An end to the policy of preventing Palestinian students from traveling overseas to get university education.

5)The development of non-invasive security measures that cease to put Palestinians through daily collective punishment for the actions of a few;

6)An end to all interference with Palestinian access to medical care. If a Palestinian is having a heart attack, it should be just as easy for that person to get emergency medical care as it is for an Israel. You can assume an elderly grandmother from Ramallah is not a terrorist, for G-d's sake.

7)An immediate guarantee that Palestinians will get their fair share of the water rights.

Those are a few things. None of them would impact Israeli security in the slightest.

As to the film, I supposed the reason it didn't include the voices from the Israeli "moderates"(although defenders of the Occupation can't really be called moderate by any normal measure)is that we've heard their whole case before. In the Western media, the mainstream Israeli case is the only one we EVER hear. And it's just robotically repeated over and over and over. Why repeat it again in the film when it's seen every bloody night on the news? And when there' nothing else we can learn FROM hearing that voice?

For the record, lastly, I wasn't calling YOU a hardliner. I was saying that current Israeli policies were rigidly hardline. It was the government, not you. Nothing personal. OK?