Jenin Camp in Ruins With Hopes for Peace

Re “Future of Jenin Lies in the Rubble,” May 4: Residents of that portion of Jenin damaged in the battle with Israel clearly want to rebuild, and Arab Israelis reportedly have already indicated that they will fund the rebuilding. The rebuff of this offer by the Palestinian Authority and the willingness of the leadership to leave thousands displaced once again demonstrate their willingness to use the average Palestinian as a pawn in the war against Israel.

The Palestinian leadership is obviously more concerned with perpetuating the now-discredited myth of a massacre than with improving the lives of the average citizens. It is this willingness of the Palestinian Authority to fuel hatred and leave open festering wounds that creates an environment ripe for suicide bombers.

Caroline Kelly

Los Angeles

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The ultimate irony: Now the refugees from the Jenin refugee camp are again refugees, and again, as before, refugees within their own country. This is “security” for Israel?

Marjorie J. Dye

Pasadena

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Re Hussein Ibish’s “Devastation Only Feeds Resistance,” Commentary, May 6: The fact is that since the Oslo accords of 1993, 97% of the Palestinians have been living under the sovereignty of the Palestinian Authority, not under Israeli “occupation.” Why did the Palestinian Authority squander the opportunity to build up a prospering Palestinian society that would live in peace alongside Israel? Yasser Arafat instead chose to build breeding grounds for fanatics and terrorist homicide bombers and import weapons in the futile hope of destroying Israel.

As an American, I take great offense at Ibish’s suggestion that the U.S. Congress ignores the plight of the Palestinians. For decades, the U.S. government has contributed two-thirds or more of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency’s budget for the Palestinian refugees. The Arab nations have consistently shown enormous indifference to the Palestinians; how else do we explain 50-year-old “refugee camps”?

Jay Davis

Los Angeles

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As the truth slowly filters out of the rubble in Jenin, Ramallah and other West Bank towns, we should all breathe a sigh of relief that more people weren’t killed. Still, in the seemingly wanton destruction of homes, cars and storefronts and the looting and trashing of offices like the ministry of education, I can’t help hearing our own past crying out in the sound of breaking glass, echoing back from a time when it was our storefronts being demolished, our people being humiliated. The $100 million it’ll take to rebuild Jenin is nothing compared with what we Jews are losing by continuing to ignore our past.

Ian Black

San Diego

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Opposing a U.N. investigation of the situation in Jenin, Susan Ehrlich (letter, May 3) asserts that the U.N.-sponsored World Conference on Racism, held at Durban, South Africa, last summer, was an “anti-Semitic hate fest” that equated Zionism with racism, singled out Israel for condemnation and failed to denounce slavery in several parts of the world.

The relevant passages of the final resolution passed by full consensus at Durban follow:

“We recall that the Holocaust must never be forgotten.”

“We ... recognize with deep concern the increase in anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.”

“We recognize the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and to the establishment of an independent state, and we recognize the right to security for all states in the region, including Israel.”

“We acknowledge that slavery and the slave trade, including the transatlantic slave trade, were appalling tragedies in the history of humanity ... and further acknowledge that slavery and the slave trade are a crime against humanity and should always have been so.”

John A. Moore Jr.

Professor of History

Cal Poly Pomona