Franco-Palestinian Word Games
Reader comment on item: Palestinian Word Games

Submitted by Marilyn Koan (France), Jan 4, 2005 at 16:44

We count on you, Mr Pipes, more than you can imagine, maybe especially so, here in France. I just hope with all my heart that your article: Palestinian Word Games gets translated into French and that the maximum is done so that the French get to read it. I for one, if and when it is translated, will do the best I can, by sending it to various people who need to be woken up to reality. (One is all for free thinking and free speech but not when it is life-endangering!) The problem is that the majority of people who read your articles 'know', whereas the ones who need to know do not read them! Hasn't it got to the point when "preaching to the unconverted" has become a crucial issue?

But we have a problem here with the "converted"! The handful of French intellectuals who are sincerely trying to counteract the dangerously confused thinking (or lack of thinking altogether?) that has pervaded this country have absolutely no qualms in using the terms that you list in your article, especially 'Palestine'. That clear-sightedness be such a rare commodity, even among the French intellectuals who, one imagined more or less, were possessed of it, is despairing. It has got to the point that to avoid stress and its consequences half the time I avoid listening to them.

The situation here regarding anti-Israel/anti-Jewish sentiment is quite mind-boggling because more often than not it is so vicious and so far-reaching. There is just so much of it, in every direction one looks, and one can find it in the most unexpected places. When one comes across people who seem not to share this feeling, even without their going so far as to empathize with Israel or with Jews, so few and far between have they become, that one is pleasantly surprised, almost grateful - (which makes one realize just how bad things are!).

But many of us have the comforting feeling, Mr Daniel Pipes, that you are one of the rare few who have a clear vision of not only what Israel and Jews have been up against over the last few years but also the long-term effects of this for the world, and that you will not weaken in your endeavour to reverse today's quasi-universal consensus that Israel (and Jews that do not condemn Israel) are, in the final analysis, if not the only baddies, more or less the baddest of the baddies. Often these days one cannot help thinking that Einstein's words of 1933: "The situation in Germany today is one of mass mental illness" while, obviously, not being strictly appropriate, seems markedly apt. And though it is said that history does not repeat itself I prefer to say - it does and it doesn't - which thought suffices to make my most ernest hope be that more and more people start waking up to what is really going on!

Last but not least: THANK YOU for the job you're doing!

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