Another role for Zionists
Like Dr. Chouake, I, too, recall the difficult days of the Yom Kippur War (“A day to play an outsized role for Israel,” May 2). Unlike him, however, I experienced those days — and the difficult weeks and months that followed — from my then-home in Jerusalem.
Forty years later, my take-away is that the most important issue facing Israel today is the need to encourage Israeli leaders to the negotiating table for peace talks. In the last few days alone, the Arab League has endorsed the idea of a two-state solution based on “comparable” and “minor” land swaps, and the re-endorsement of the official Arab Peace Initiative by non-Palestinian Arab countries is remarkably similar to the American framework that has been put forth for these negotiations.
As a “determined and committed” American Jew myself, I therefore believe that the “oversized role” we can best play in ensuring “the survival of the Jewish homeland and the Jewish people” is to seize the opportunity that this window of hopeoffers. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if thousands of similarly passionate American Zionists were to meet with congressional leaders and express our abiding desire for a negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, rather than confine our powerful voices to perpetuating concerns couched in the language of threats, defense, and funding sophisticated weaponry? Who knows, it might actually work.
Sherry Rosen
Princeton
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