HTML Snippet
RSS Add-Me
HTML Snippet
The mother of all conflicts; The China threat
VIA IHT :
Roger Cohen gives an excellent analysis in "A November deadline for Mideast peace (Globalist, Aug. 30), but his history is backwards.
The mother of all conflicts is not the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but the Arab-Persian conflict, which goes back more than two millennia, even beyond the sacking of Babylon by the Persians.
The largest and most deadly Mideast conflict since the creation of Israel in 1948 was the Iran-Iraq war, which had no connection with Israel. This war ended the condemnation, boycott and isolation of Egypt by the Arab world for making peace with Israel, as all Arabs rallied to the support of Saddam Hussein against Iran.
The war between Iran and Iraq lasted for eight years. All the Israeli-Arab wars are negligible in comparison.
t would be good if a just and lasting peace were found between the Israelis and the Palestinians. But the first step is to cut the conflict down to size. It is only a minor conflict and, unfortunately, also a political football being kicked around by major powers who use it for their own purposes.
Harry J. Lipkin,
Rehovot, Israel
Rami Khouri's assertion in the article "One year after the summer war" (Views, Sept. 1) that "resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict is the most important step that can be taken towards addressing the many other conflicts in the Middle East" fails to withstand close scrutiny.
A resolution of the conflict that satisfies the minimum requirements of both sides would be most welcome. But to suggest a linkage with the other problems plaguing the region is misleading at best, malicious at worst. Either way, Khouri's approach seeks to place the onus, above all, on Israel and at the same time divert attention from the region's more deep-rooted challenges.
Would an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict halt the sectarian bloodletting in Iraq? Would it persuade Syria to recognize Lebanese sovereignty and stop meddling in its neighbor's internal affairs? Would it end widespread human rights abuses in Iran and Tehran's quest to become a nuclear-armed power?
The challenges facing the Middle East were best summed up in the annual UN-sponsored Arab Human Development Report. They are threefold: a freedom deficit, underscored by the absence of true democracy throughout the region; a gender deficit, reflected in the relegation of women to second-class status in many Arab countries; and a knowledge deficit, highlighted by those Arab nations lagging far behind in a world driven by science and technology.
When these challenges are finally confronted, then the Middle East will have the chance to succeed.
David A. Harris, New York Executive director, American Jewish Committee
The China threat
Regarding the article "China enhances its cyberwar forces" (Aug. 30): The ability of Chinese government hackers to break into sensitive government and military Web sites shows not only the callousness that the Chinese have toward the governments of free nations, but also the increased threat that China poses toward its neighbors and the United States.
It is only a matter of time until the Chinese military will be able to break into the Pentagon's computer systems. What's at stake here is not the dominance of a superpower, but the freedom of the entire world.
Thomas Raudenbush, Seoul
