On my mind...

Letters: Israel and Lebanon - Editorials & Commentary - International Herald Tribune

L'IHT publie ma lettre sur un édito de Thomas Friedamn, mais en en coupant mon argumentaire pour une politique qui permettrait à Israël et ses alliés de panser les plaies avec les populations arabes que la violence leur aliène: je me cite en rétablissant ce qui manque en italiques.

Thomas Friedman (”Buffett and Hezbollah,” Views, Aug. 10) makes good sense - everyone would prefer to make business, not war.

But the Palestinians and Lebanese cannot live in peace if they are under constant threat of having their power plants and other infrastructure bombed, supply lines broken, and elected politicians jailed or murdered before they have had time to adjust to the realities of running a government. All of this has happened in the last few months as Israeli citizens were, Friedman tells us, peacefully engaged in the business ventures of Warren Buffett and wanted nothing more than to be left alone. Even if the terrorists are hiding in the general population, Israel cannot tell its neighbors to just leave everything they have and beat it, and they will be all right, because obviously this is not what being all right is about. This policy should not be an option. Hezbollah is a terrible organization, it has ample support from Iran which is waging a proxy war through them, but Israel has to work harder to understand why it exists, has more and more supporters and fighters, and be imaginative about reversing the trend toward increased support for the group–being aggressive about cleaning up the mess they created, rebuilding infrastructures destroyed in previous crises could be a good idea, .

But it is probably too late. At the moment, the cold truth is that it is more sensible for young and old Arabs to put their trust in Hamas or Hezbollah than to expect Israel’s neighborly - and business-like - respect.

After centuries of ghettoes, one would hope that the Jews would come up with a better idea than to raise walls around the country to protect themsleves against their neighbors… even if some of them might delude themselves into thinking that it is the other way round: that they are walling up their restless neighbors in ghettoes. In the short run, ghettoes are inhuman; in the long run, they do not work. But sadly it is what Israel is turning itself into.

Jacques Pothier, Meudon, France

Pour illustrer le dossier, ce document interactif du NYT qui montre l'efficacité des bombardements Israéliens : le même quartier "Hezbollah" de Beyrouth, avant et après:

The New York Times > International > Interactive Feature > Interactive Graphic : Pummeling Hezbollah

Une initiative encourageante tout de même:

Des intellectuels juifs français dénoncent “l’offensive meurtrière d’Israël”
LE MONDE | 11.08.06

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