Dear William Herbe,

It is difficult to respond to Glatzer’s op-ed about Israel. This slice of hate speech given to us in our university newspaper is so full of half-truths and outright lies that it is impossible to respond to everything he invents. How can our paper print such nonsense about secret Israeli conspiracies for ethnic cleansing? If it is so secret, how does Glatzer know about it?

From 1948 to present day, Israel has constantly tried to make peace with its neighbors. In the famous Camp David peace talks with then President Clinton, Israel offered Arafat all of Gaza, 98 percent of the West Bank, and half of Jerusalem. The Arab response? Suicide bombing and murder of Israeli babies and pregnant women. In the past few years, Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza & Lebanon (ending the so-called occupation of these areas). The Arab response was to launch thousands of missiles & rockets at school children & civilians in Israel. In 1948, app. 700,000 Jews were kicked out from the Arab countries where they had lived. They have never been compensated. They were absorbed into Israel. On the other hand, app. 600,000 Arabs left Israel to join in the fight against Israel. However, their own Arab brethren never absorbed them into their countries, preferring rather to keep them subjugated in refugee camps so as to be used as a political football against Israel.

The truth is that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. Surrounded by 22 Arab dictatorships, Israel is the only country where women have equal rights & where they don’t have to worry about being stoned to death in an “honor killing” if they have been raped. Israel is the only country where gays are free & don’t have to worry about being murdered. It is the only country where the number of Christians is increasing. Twenty percent of the Israelis are Arab citizens with equal rights accorded to all Israelis. It is also a bitter truth that this tiny country of 5 million Jews (in a world with more than a billion Muslims) has been subject to non-stop attacks by neighbors bent on the destruction of Israel by all means possible. Despite all of this, Israel has been in the forefront of advancing green technology & medical breakthroughs for all people on the planet. All a rational caring person can do is to hope and pray for the day when the Arabs will give up their murderous desire to “drive the Jews into the sea”, a day when Jews & Arabs can live side by side in peace, and a day when there will be no war anymore.

-Kenny Jackson