Shoshana Lev's Response to J. Isaac

Greetings,

Shoshana Lev, a Ph.D. student at Binghamton University, 
asked me to forward this reply to you all.  -KS
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Response To Jeffrey Isaac

Shohana Lev

Dear Jeffrey Isaac,

There are so many levels on which to speak of this 
process- not only the peace process-- but our own 
involvement.  Your involvement with Peace now!
and the anger veiled by the supposed reasoning of 
a not so unusual political science report does not 
seem ironic or surprise me.  It is also not surprising 
that there are many white American Jewish intellectuals 
who feel the way that you do.  What are the investments 
in this political location?

I feel compelled to go point by point with you like a lawyer 
proving you dead wrong on your own terms.  But I have a 
feeling this would not sway your opinion.  I do not think 
that even the "rationality" of your training is what is to blame.  
If you were ever critical of the United States' policies,
racism, or the many forms of colonialism still in function, 
you would have to use some force other than reason to 
come out with your tragically unbalanced equation in this matter.   
That whether a small group of the many Palestinians living in 
the Middle East utter or make a declaration of war on
Israel is for the purposes of Israel and the United States' 
ultimate political strategy quite incidental.  It is incidental to the 
larger economic and political plans and goals of the larger and 
stronger of two former partners of "peace".  

Jeffrey it is not that it is a crime to be strong (as you sarcastically 
suggested in your call for a more "civilized" group of colonized 
peoples).  It is that when that very strength is used for veiling
destruction rather than curtailing it- an easier proposition for those 
of such strength-  is when that very "strength" should be called to 
task.  And how did it come to be?  Does Israeli "strength" have a 
teleology?  I question your need to defend in a time when too few 
question.  To say that all peace is flawed is intriguingly irrelevant 
when the word 'peace' has all but lost its meaning. 

Whose fault is that you say?  Again, just as the call to give 
the "imperfect" peace a chance is for you all the responsibility
of the Palestinians.  I must contend that the imperfect peace 
you spoke so eloquently of could simply be found in Israel's 
capitulation to the Oslo accords.  And the declaration of war, 
the very negation of this imperfect peace was sadly again on 
the side of the Israeli government against the Palestinians.  
After seven years of waiting for some sign of some kind of an
imperfect peace, still there was none.  The Oslo accords were 
never implemented--there were no attempts.  There was no 
major withdrawal of troops, there was an increase of Jewish 
settlements in territories supposedly given back to the Palestinians,  
there were more settlements constructed under Barak than under 
Netanyahu, houses were/are still being bulldozed, water in the 
refugee camps is still being turned off for days at the leisure of 
Israel-- not to mention the tanks, the helicopters, the bloodshed.  
You talk about the responsibly of the Palestinians in all of
this?  How on your own terms could it possibly add up?