By J.L. Greenberg, , Seattle
In defending Israel’s right to its land, and opposing the concept of the two-state solution that is being demanded by President Bus and Secretary Rice, more of our own people should emphasize the parallel of the USA’s history with that of Israel’s (“Once again no breakthrough,” March 30).
When the southern Confederate states decided to secede, the North did not attempt to accommodate the south by agreeing to a two-state solution in the interests of peace, even though the South was never any military terrorist threat to the North, and never sent any suicide bombers or rockets in attacks on the North. The southern states simply wanted to go peacefully on their own way on their own land, claim to which was certainly as good as the Northern States’ claim to their Northern land. And there was never any dispute as to what constituted the borders of the Confederate states.
Yet the North attacked and invaded the South. The North did not compromise or make risky concessions for peace. They demanded total surrender. They invaded the South in an all-out brutal, terribly destructive war, completely burned down many Southern cities, blockaded and bombarded Southern ports, and totally destroyed the South’s manufacturing and production facilities and capabilities.
The losses and fatalities were greater in that Civil War than the casualties of World War I and II combined.
Bush and Rice are chutzpadik in demanding of Israel, “Do as I say, not as I did.”