Proper Targets for Palestinians’ Anger

* Re “Tough Choice for Barak,” editorial, Oct. 24: The “tough choice” lies squarely with Yasser Arafat. I don’t recall seeing Israelis rioting in Ramallah, shooting and throwing Molotov cocktails and chunks of cement at Palestinian Authority police. Nor do I recall televised coverage of an angry mob of Israelis storming the Palestinian Authority police station in Nablus to lynch Muslim prisoners.

You stated, “Arab leaders worry that the calls they are hearing for action against Israel might suddenly be redirected against them.” That’s precisely where Palestinian blame and anger should go. They should direct their hatred against Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser and his successors, who kept Palestinians in Gaza refugee camps rather than absorb them as citizens. They should direct their frustration against King Hussein of Jordan and his successor, who held Palestinians in second-class citizenship and poverty rather than integrate them.

Jordan has been the Palestinian “promised land” since 1947, when the U.N. partition plan divided the former British mandate into Israel and Transjordan. It’s high time that Arab extremists directed their hatred and nationalist aspirations at Jordan’s King Abdullah II instead of the people of Israel.

SHELDON M. STERN

Irvine

*

Henri J. Barkey has missed the mark in blaming Arafat and Benjamin Netanyahu as the culprits who undid peace (Opinion, Oct. 22).

Armed by the West, the Israelis muscled their way into Palestinian lands in 1948. They evicted millions of Palestinians from their homes and terrorized the rest. The Israeli lobby has since then been successful in recycling American taxpayer dollars to fool successive Western governments into heavily arming Israel and supporting Israel in the U.N. The Israelis have then used this might to slaughter unarmed women, children and men, to bulldoze homes and to make millions of people refugees.

It is ironic that people who claim to have been victims of genocide themselves would perpetuate the same horror on other people. If the Israelis continue on this road, they will have sown the seeds of their own destruction.

HAROON PAREKH

Diamond Bar