No Folly Then, No Folly Now

Submitted by Saul Rapkin (United States), Apr 5, 2005 at 20:08

Dr. Pipes issued a challenge: "(challenge to the reader: name another democracy that has forcibly removed thousands its own citizens from their lawful homes)". The answer is, the United States of America, when it interred Japanese Americans during World War II. Certainly a different set of circumstances, but a forcible removal, never-the-less.

I believe Mr. Sharon sees the withdrawal as a win-win situation, with the key to his thinking in the very quote Mr. Pipes tries to hold against the Prime Minister: "A unilateral withdrawal is...a recipe for war." In the present circumstances, if the withdrawal does, by some miraculous turn of events, lead to peace, Sharon wins. If, on the other hand it leads to war, the Palestinians will have used the withdrawal to give Sharon the excuse he needs to drive them out of the West Bank and Gaza once and for all, and disperse them into the existing Arab countries, where they can be a festering sore among their own kind, and not on the State of Israel.

I, for one, hope Mr. Sharon was right then, and is right now.

Saul Rapkin
Folsom, California

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