Letter to the editor: Ignorance is no help

The American politicians and retired generals we see on TV these days talking about Israel have no idea what they are talking about.

They have never lived in Israel, Lebanon or Jordan. They have never been to Bethlehem or Jericho or swum in the Sea of Galilee. They could not give you the name of a grocer, hairdresser or cabdriver they have talked to in the whole of the Middle East.

Worse than that, they have never bothered to learn Hebrew or Arabic, much less taken a ride on a camel.

They remind me of a man who, after visiting Paris twice, thinks he has the right to tell the people of France what they ought to do. These talking heads don’t know how many Crusades there were or where Richard the Lionheart fought.

They think the history of the Middle East started in 1967. But Israel’s ‘67 borders simply mark the place where the fighting stopped in 1949. They are no more sacrosanct than the 38th parallel in Korea.

I am particularly appalled at the recent comments by former President Barack Obama, a man who is always eager to be on camera. He said that both Israel and Hamas are complicit in the current war. I imagine he would have said the same thing about the U.S. and Japan just after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

This kind of blatant ignorance, combined with unbelievable hubris, is of no help at all. It encourages the worst in the world to continue their savagery and shows that a former American president does not even know the difference between right and wrong. (Not to be outdone, our current president doesn’t, either.)

JIM FRENCH

Dakota, Illinois