“And just when we thought we had seen everything,” writes Uri Dromi, “the Palestinians came up with yet another surprise: murder via the Internet” (“Predicting the next Middle East episode on terrorism,” Commentary, Feb. 2).
With this line, Dromi suggests that violence in the Middle East is a uniquely Palestinian phenomenon. This is thinly disguised racism, which ignores the fact that Palestinians have been subjected to five decades of state violence by Israel, and more than three decades of the most brutal Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Every single killing, whether of a Palestinian or an Israeli, is one too many. But to take one event out of its context and ignore the hundreds of Palestinians who have been killed only since September–nearly 100 of them children–is breathtakingly dishonest.
Dromi could have written that just when Palestinians thought they’d seen everything, they saw Mohammed Aldura gunned down in his father’s arms. And they saw an Israeli court release a Jewish settler with a fine and community service for beating to death an 11-year-old boy with a pistol butt.
But the enduring question that Dromi avoids is why Israel continues to occupy and rule the Palestinians by force.
History teaches one lesson: As long as there is occupation and oppression, there will be violence. And as long as there is violence, there will be more violence. Israel has done more than its share to perpetuate this situation and, as the occupying power, has it in its power to end it.
