Yael Steinberg’s bias is quite apparent.
It is difficult for me to comprehend why so many Jewish Americans are insistent on their beliefs that Israel wants peace, when the world as a community sees things differently. Saying “Israel has no partner for peace” is absurd. Take a look at who receives the most foreign aid from the US. As an American, first generation, Jewish Americans need to understand that many of us are fed up of carrying Israel’s burden. Most of us have no affinity to the land, and as an American one should want the best for their country before others, including allies. It seems to me that many of these Jewish Americans are willing to see the image of America suffer at the expense of a country that acts like it is always the victim and never the bully. My suggestion to those Jewish Americans out there who vow their love for Israel and believe they are continually pursuing peace is to move to Israel. Don’t make Americans pay for the consequences of the Israeli/Arab/Palestinian inability to come to a consensus.
As a side note, “The Jewish Star symbolizes resistance to the campaign of hate.” No, just like a cross or crescent moon, it simply provokes it, insinuating that my God’s dick is bigger than yours.
JOHN TAYLOR
A laughably underdeveloped understanding of Middle East foreign policy, Yael Steinberg’s obvious affinity for Israel aside.
There is a difference between bias, feeling an inherent affinity for one policy position over another based on beliefs or faith, and a misunderstanding of the policies one is discussing, biased or otherwise. This is not to say I advocate Yael’s position, however, I’d rather someone take a leap of faith and hit the logical (because correct is subjective) target than attempt logic and reason and miss it all together. With this in mind, if you’d like your counterargument to be taken seriously in the public forum, I’d suggest not responding with the same amount of bias you spend energy criticizing, for one, and stick to logic. I would like to counter from a logical standpoint, not a biased one.
Logical flaws:
“…world as a community sees things differently.” This is called the part to whole flaw, insinuating that because a part of the world feels this way, the entire world does. The world as a community homogeneously agrees on very few things, and the most divisive foreign policy issue of our time is certainly not one of them.
In practice, the phrase “Israel has no partner for peace” refers only to Middle Eastern countries. If you knew this, the flaw is called equivocation, using a phrase in an effort to mislead or hedge. Israel has diplomatic allies spanning the globe. To think that either Israelis or Americans or both are trying to hide the financial relationship between the two is much more absurd than the claim you’ve made.
The implication that Israel, by virtue of receiving American foreign aid, is the only country making “Americans pay for the consequences of the Israeli/Arab/Palestinian inability to come to a consensus” fails to account for the foreign aid distributed to the rest of the Middle East (Israel 2.8b, Egypt 1.6b, Jordan 850m, West Bank/Gaza 500m, Lebanon 238m, etc.) If the claim you’re making is that when a country receives foreign aid from the US, it is making Americans pay for its conflict without warrant, then the entire Middle East is equally at fault.
At no point have I expressed outright pro-Israel sentiment, only a passion for the use of logic and proper argumentation.
Finally, Editorial Board: Obviously, I don’t pretend to know your intentions, but this has gone on too long. Deciding not to post a letter to the editor about Middle East foreign policy (whether anti-Israel, anti-Palestinian, or anti-anything else) doesn’t imply that you’re taking sides. You don’t need to post the inevitable counter to every letter on the single most divisive and misunderstood foreign policy issue; there is a point at which it becomes counter-productive, especially when none of the letters express any positivity about the groups on our campus working together to at least come to a consensus here in Davis. As it stands, by promoting these letters as competent (this is certainly not the only one) The Aggie is fostering the type of combative dialog I would hope it would like eradicated.