Letters to the Editor
Both the dilemma Jeffrey Goldberg delineates (“Unforgiven,” May Atlantic) and David Grossman’s quarrel with the Israeli policy of not ending the Occupation reflect the historical lacuna at the heart of virtually all Israeli discourse: the long-planned, forcible, and often violent dispossession of 800,000 Palestinian Arabs from their homes, farms, businesses, and personal possessions from 1947 to 1949, in the view that Jews’ need for a homeland and the Zionist determination to locate it in Palestine trumped Palestinian Arab residents’ basic human rights.
By the end of the massive cleansing operation in the summer of 1949, more than 5,000 Palestinians had been killed. Israel controlled 78 percent of Palestine and within a short time had effectively stolen approximately 84 percent of the real estate behind the Green Line and had leveled most Palestinian villages.
Goldberg, Ehud Olmert, and Grossman alike acknowledge only post-1967 Palestinian grievances. This continued moral amnesia allows Israel’s dismissal of internationally recognized Palestinian refugee claims and its brazen pretense of generosity in offering to give up an East Jerusalem hinterland and the poorer half of the West Bank, which is divided by settlements and Israeli-only roadways. The reality remains: the wronged Palestinian millions refuse to go away.
William H. Slavick
Portland, Maine
Jeffrey Goldberg correctly notes that the Palestinian national movement “is perhaps the least successful national liberation movement of the 20th century.” Ironically, this has been as much a problem for Israel as for the Palestinian Arabs. Had the Palestinians at any time from 1948 on achieved statehood, Israel would likely not be at its present unfortunate pass.
What are we to make of this failure? It is certainly not for want of money, arms, or international political sympathy and support, which the Palestinians have reaped to an extraordinary extent. (What would a Kurdish nationalist give for a mere slice of the Palestinian pie?) Nor is it for want of territory. The Palestinians were offered half of the Palestinian Mandate in 1948 but refused it; and Arabs controlled the West Bank and Gaza from 1948 to 1967, yet no Palestinian political entity arose in either place, not even provisionally. Now Palestinians completely control Gaza, but rather than building a state there, they claim that they are under Israeli occupation.
The common explanation is that the Palestinians want a state encompassing the entire former Palestinian Mandate. But a more likely explanation is that the Palestinian national movement is not and has never been a national movement in the ordinary sense of the term. It was for a long time the vanguard of the Arab nationalist movement and is today the front line of aggressive Islamism. The establishment of a state is not the goal. The elimination of a foreign, non-Arab, non-Muslim entity in the Levant is.
Jonathan Keiler
Bowie, Md.
Jeffrey Goldberg’s piece sets forth a stark and arresting reality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: democracy is paralyzing the Israeli government. Ehud Olmert’s words of peace and withdrawal have thus far led to no action. How can they, when one body of citizens, led by the pioneering settlers of the Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva, claims that God will punish the Jews if they divide the holy land, while another sector of society, led by David Grossman, screams for immediate withdrawal? If Israel is to accomplish anything on the road to peace, it must find a way to square its democracy—the linchpin of its legitimate standing as a nation among nations—with its ability to enter into meaningful compromise with the Palestinians, while still safeguarding the state of Israel as a Jewish homeland. The answer is not easy, but as Jeffrey Goldberg reveals, it must come fast.
Jake Englander
Brooklyn, N.Y.
Ehud Olmert may be inarticulate and lack vision, but I fundamentally disagree with Jeffrey Goldberg’s assertion that the “prime minister of Israel should be able to muster an argument for the necessity of his country.” Is there any other country in the world whose leader is subject to this demeaning test? Let’s just pick a few of the B’s: Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina. None of them were independent states in 1948. Are their leaders ever asked to muster such an argument? When the “necessity” quiz is applied everywhere, then we can start critiquing Olmert’s answer.
Ron Fein
Arlington, Mass.
Contrary to what Ta-Nehisi Coates writes (“‘This is How We Lost to the White Man,’” May Atlantic), I Spy was not the first weekly show to feature an African American in a lead role. Alvin Childress, Spencer Williams Jr., Tim Moore, and Ernestine Wade were the ensemble black cast of a comedy called Amos ’n’ Andy (1951–1953). Ethel Waters, Louise Beavers, Butterfly McQueen, and Ruby Dandridge were principal players in Beulah (1950–1953).
Rich Forman
Van Nuys, Calif.
On one level, many comparisons can be made between jazz and hip-hop and their respective impacts on black culture. I can even recall an interview on The Arsenio Hall Show (if I may date myself) where Quincy Jones compared his son’s boyhood love of hip-hop to his own childhood love of bebop (an earlier style of jazz). Sounds nice, but on every other level, this comparison is bogus and may in fact reveal something about what Cosby is saying. Just think for a minute about the thousands of hours it takes to learn to play and master an instrument, the relationship between the teacher and the student, the mentoring of a young musician on the road by older musicians, the sacrifices to find time to practice and play. In short, discipline and respect. I don’t think Cosby is blind to the parallels between his arguments about hip-hop and those made in the past about jazz, I just think he has a point.
Chris Cordone
Los Angeles, Calif.
Ta-Nehisi Coates replies:
I’d like to say to Chris Cordone, simply, don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. Take it from someone who, in his deluded younger years, did indeed try—hip-hop is a lot more complicated than rhyming couplets and stolen drum riffs. I’d ask you to spend some time with a few gems (Nas’s Illmatic or De La Soul’s 3 Feet High and Rising are good starts) and a few stinkers (just turn on BET or your local pop-rap radio affiliate), and then form an opinion. I would not, from a mere sample of Kenny G or even John Coltrane, make any broad statements about jazz. Those of us who were shaped by hip-hop are only asking the same.
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