Dang you're gettin quite a bit of flack for being anti-israeli/pro-palestinian

i think you did a good job of relaying the numbers and facts on the ground, (banning of reporters, obama's flipflop) but unfortunately your anti-israeli bias will detract from your main purpose. Regardless of whether or not i agree with you, or the fact that your voice is a counter to the ubiquitous pro-israeli attitude in western media/politics; as an academic I'd advise to you maintain objectivity in your vocabulary.

As the comments indicate people are getting caught up in the argument of good guy vs bad guy and good and bad is subjectively defined. That's a problem far too complicated to address in a letter.
I extracted these main points from your letter before reading the comments: reinforcing critical thinking in your students- which i'm sure you do since you encourage them to be critical of the information they receive, and instilling young people with the mentality to be concerned over global affairs and to arrive towards intellectual solutions after seeing a variety of viewpoints. And if thats the lesson your students are coming away with, then keep on teaching.

AWESOME ARTICLE, I learned a lot from your views. =)

Please read this article in the Guardian newspaper by Avi Shlaim, titled: How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe. Here’s the link:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/07/gaza-israel-palestine

This is for anybody who cares to know the truth.

I have to call BS on your clearly biased letter. Here is a quote:

"When it comes to the current crisis in Gaza, you MUST above all understand that when Israel is killing innocent Palestinians it is not because their religion tells them to do this and when Hamas indiscriminately casts rockets into Israel it is not because their religion tells them to do that. "

So Israel is killing innocents, but Hamas is just casting rockets. Don't you see how your chosen language automatically shows bias? And no, calling the rockets "indiscriminate" doesn't make up for it.

On the one hand you've placed the killing of innocent people and on the other hand the mere firing of weapons.

If you were teaching my kid I'd be on the phone to the principal demanding that you be reprimanded. I don't send my daughter to school to be indoctrinated by either side in this fight.

for you to disparage a teacher you don't know and question his integrity is beyond comment. Furthermore, all teachers, professors, and textbooks express opinions, often from a pro-israel vantage point. Simply because this teacher does not agree does not make his view any less important. These aren't children, 16-17 year old's have the ability to reason and rationalize. They can make up their minds as they please. It is important that in a public school all sides of an issue are presented and students have the freedom to decide what they feel is right. While the analysis here may be lacking from an israeli perspective, the students are easily able to see the other side of the issue from reading any of the leading newspapers, journals, or watching the news. Which is what originally prompted the teacher's response if you read closely. Also, I'm a bit surprised you have studied the curricula at maddrasses enough to know what kind of messages they preach to students. Your foreign language skills must be impressive.

p.s. Not everyone agrees that Israel is an occupation -- and it's not your place to preach that to your students, who again, unless they are in a madrassa (Islamic school) with established anti-Israel views, should not be hearing your personal opinions on the matter.

I can't believe you are preaching one side -- any side -- to your STUDENTS. I hope this isn't a public high school, because I am sure these 11th graders didn't sign up for Anti-Israel Ideology 101. All this under the guise of a friendly, caring teacher who is taking time from his vacation to educate his students. Wow-- I'm disgusted.

The previous comment addressed to Starbuck from Anonymous is mine.

Starbuck,
U said :"What is a balanced approach by the United States when Hamas' stated goal is the destruction of Israel and refuses to even recognize their Jewish neighbor?What is a balanced approach in that situation?"

Well,there is absloutely nothing balanced in your misleading and distortion of facts:so the illegal jews land in PAlestine,destroy it and ethnically cleanese 70% of its indigenous population and occupy the rest-and then set up a "state" on to of the ruins of Palestine-And then demand that victims recognize the leigitmacy of an illigitimate aggressor,tormentor and occupier??

All the PAlestinian people are demanding is the status quo ante-the recovery of the their PAlestine the jews destroyed.
Is this too much to ask for?? Is this fair and balanced????
"

U make a serious discrepency when u equate Hamas with "israel:

"It is imperative to note that neither Israel nor Hamas is the good guy in this; both are guilty of stupid, senseless violence."

U can not compromise the truth and the facts just to appease your readers and sound like a "nice and balanced Muslim."

Why don't read Rahisd Khaldi's peice-of Coloumbia University-in today's NY Times.

The Arab conflict with jews in occupied Palestine is about stolen land and not religion-thou the jews use religion and religious biblical myths to justify their theft and occupation of all of PAlestine:"God gave us this land," when in fact not God buyt colonial mandate Britain gave them Arab PAlsetine as per the infamous Balfor Declaration in
November,1917.

What is a balanced approach by the United States when Hamas' stated goal is the destruction of Israel and refuses to even recognize their Jewish neighbor?

What is a balanced approach in that situation?

The body count from the 24/7 Sunni-Shiite centuries-old blood feud currently being carried out in Iraq,

US Troops, 3,402 combat and 822 non-combat and 90,253 – 98,521 Iraqi civilians killed.

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/ and
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/casualty.pdf .

test

The fact that the daily barrage of rockets into Israel causes "so little relative damage" is one of the most absurd statements I have ever read. C'mon. I know G'Town is a better school than this.

Have you noticed, Abed, that the weaponry Hamas is using has been gradually upgraded over time? Sure, they have no clue where their rockets are going but the distances those rockets travel are now 3x greater than they were a few years ago. And I suspect that the accuracy rating is not far behind either. Perhaps only then, under your standards, it will be acceptable for Israel to defend itself?

Further, you wax poetic about the killing of "innocent civilians" in Gaza. Interesting that you make no mention of the fact that Hamas routinely uses hospitals, schools, and the like to launch its attacks. For crying out loud, in its own official statements, Hamas makes clear that the men, women, and children of Gaza are to act as a "shield" towards Israel.

Your letter opens with what is arguably your only valid point - that both parties are equally responsible for the current situation. However, you then go on to chastise Israel for everything under the sun. If both parties are to share blame equally, where is the condemnation for Hamas in your letter? Why is every "support" paragraph in your letter an indictment of Israel or the U.S.?

test

masha2allah, speak truth to power yo.

Abed explains:
“Viewing Muslims as a monolith makes it easy to assume that we all lend our support to Hamas in the ongoing conflict because they are Muslim.”

If not so why the Congress of Muslim Clerics is asking all Muslims to support Hamas in its ongoing conflict with Israel?

As an atheist concerned with the plurality of beliefs (because atheism is a belief without institutionalized rites) I find the comment above absolutely apalling.
It is the fruit of incredible misconceptions. Its conculsion is even more unsound as a non of the three books on which the three great monotheisms are based are pieces of law. How then do you declare a book null and void! Some tried to get rid of culture and books by burning them or making them forbidden (USSR, Nazi Germany and others), it is dangerous and cannot be a path towards peace.
This statement just proves how its author misconceives the concept of belief and religion itself.

Congratulations for the author's article, it is very interesting. As a matter of intelectual and public speaking honesty, moderate views like his should be encouraged, no matter how tough the opposition from radicals on both side is.
Columns from people aware of policy alternatives towards peace in Palestine should also be put forward.

Solid piece Abed. GET'EM. I'm sure you'll be lighting up the front page in no time. Truth is always refreshing. In the words of C.S. Lewis, your students are lucky beyond dessert.

5) Bali-in 2002-killing 202 people, 164 of whom were foreign nationals, and 38 Indonesian citizens. A further 209 people were injured.

6) Bali in 2005- Twenty people were killed, and 129 people were injured by three bombers who killed themselves in the attacks.

7) Spain in 2004- killing 191 people and wounding 2,050.

8) UK in 2005- The bombings killed 52 commuters and the four radical Islamic suicide bombers, injured 700.

Other elements of our War on Terror:

1. Saddam, his sons and major henchmen have been deleted. Saddam's bravado about WMD was one of his major mistakes.

2. Iran is being been contained. (beside containing the Sunni-Shiite civil war in Baghdad, that is the main reason we are in Iraq. And yes, essential oil continues to flow from the region.)

3. Libya has become almost civil. Recently Libya agreed to pay $1.5 billion to the victims of their terrorist activities Apparently this new reality from an Islamic country has upset OBL and his “crazies” as they have threatened Libya. OBL sure is a disgrace to the world especially the Moslem world!!! Or is he???

4. North Korea is still uncivil but is contained. With the opening up of rail traffic between North and South Korea after 50 years and with the assistance of the US Navy in retrieving NK ships and personnel hopefully a fresh sense of civility is afoot.

5. North Korea was taken off the terrorist country list recently.

6. Northern Ireland is finally at peace.

7. The Jews and Palestinians are being separated by walls. Hopefully the walls will follow the 1948 UN accords and the Annapolis Peace Conference is at least somewhat successful.

8. Bin Laden has been cornered under a rock in Western Pakistan since 9/11.

9. Fanatical Islam has basically been contained to the Middle East but a wall between India and Pakistan would be a plus for world peace. Ditto for a wall between Afghanhistan and Pakistan.

10. Timothy McVeigh was executed. Terry Nichols will follow soon.

11. Eric Rudolph is spending three life terms in prison with no parole.

12. Jim Jones, David Koresh, Kaczynski, the "nuns" from Rwanda, and the KKK were all dealt with and either eliminated themselves or are being punished.

13. Islamic Sudan, Darfur and Somalia are still terror hot spots.

14. The terror and torture of Muslims in Bosnia, Kosovo and Kuwait were ended by the proper application of the military forces of the USA and her freedom-loving friends. Radovan Karadzic was finally captured on 7/23/08 and is charged with genocide, crimes against humanity and violations of the law of war -- charges related to the 1992-1995 civil war that followed Bosnia-Herzegovina's secession from Yugoslavia.

15. And of course the bloody terror brought about the Japanese, Nazis and Communists was with great difficulty eliminated by the good guys.

Hope you understand, folks, this isn't about a 'double standard,' this is about a lot of us here in America holding our breath and hoping Bush doesn't take a whim to do something *dumber than usual* in order to leave an even *bigger* mess the GOP can blame the Dems for.

Already he claimed 'God' was on his side and had Fox News claim it was anti-Christian to not blame the decline of the last of out manufacturing infrastructure on building bigger SUVs no one can afford, then when it falls apart, hand the national wealth over to the same greedy people he deregulated.

Damn mess over here.

Probably Hamas got all that influence *cause* we had such an ideology-based screwup in office all this time. And chose this timing to torch off all those missiles, because, as Biden was made fun of kinda-referring to, they want to try and maintain some influence by 'testing' the situation.

As we say here in the states, shooting their wad.

Hoping to tie Obama to Bush, probably. Get Obama to speak and then have Bush do his usual anyway.

Drag stuff out.

Way it looks to me is... Hamas threw the brinksmanship out the window and gave Israel an excuse.

That ain't actually on us.

Shabash puthar

I love that you made them research the keffiyah/hattah. And I love how well written your letter is. What a beautiful teacher, your students must be honored to learn from you.

Great post Mr.Bhuyan

to the religious comment--- "But they (Israelis) are not targetting civilians as Hamas openly claimed to do" This is debatable.

Why is warfare looked at in terms of intentionality with powerful states like the US and Israel? Why does it even matter if Israel claims to be targetting Hamas and not civilians in Gaza?

The facts stand on their own. Israel HAS targetted civilians. Over 400 human casaulties on a land mass as small as Gaza is not collatoral damage. It is targeted killing of civilians. So even if Israel claims to be engaging in military defense, the whole world can see that they are simply trying to debilitate Palestinian society. They're afraid of uprise, resistence a people taking back their homeland.

Excellent post on the blog, if only more people would read this. Give the man a column on the front page.

I mean, you *do* understand this little piece of reality is *exactly* why the timing of this sudden orgy of rocket attacks has been happening in the *first* place, right, sir?

Hamas is about to run out of Bush-excuses for what they're doing, and so is Israel.

Unless the world has an imminent need for someone *else* to come along and blow the crap out of some strangers in that region, it's *all you guys.*

"Talk about a double standard. Obama has said nothing of the like when it comes to the crisis in Gaza. Now, while it is important to remember that he made this statement during the campaign, making the statement undercuts the excuse he is making now to avoid taking a position on the conflict in Gaza, that "there is one president at a time.""

This, by the way, sir, is not an 'excuse.' It's a *reality.*

While it's reasonable and expected to speak on foreign policy as a candidate, this screwup Bush is still in office another couple of weeks. Nothing done in this time will have any credibility, and Obama can't do anything but *talk* till Bush and Cheney are out. He says something, Mr. Fratboy Cowboy decides to do something else, ...great for the Republicans... Not so good for anyone there.

Gods forbid anyone *else* should be responsible for their own actions when America's not in a position to be blamed, eh?

No, it's not a 'double standard.'

It's about who's President right now.

Real sorry, 'who's President right now' isn't what we wanted, either.

War.

Sucks.

Dear Abed,
This is a great article with wonderful ideas.
Keep in mind that it is so difficult to speak the truth some times, but it is important that we do speak the truth even if it was too hard to swallow or accept.

I want no harm to Israeli civilians and I want no harm to Palestinians as well. Israel must remember that might is not right, and that power of tanks lead no where. Hamas must keep in mind that forgiveness is an act of worship and is a virtue.

Oh, Gods.

I confess to being all but totally-numb by now about people blowing the crap out of each other over there.

At least, this time, Hamas made use of force simpler than usual.

If the next town over were launching hundreds of rocket attacks against me, I'd really not give a crap why.

If *my* town were launching hundreds of rockets at the next, and I wasn't stopping whoever was doing it, I wouldn't get too indignant about the response, either.

I dunno how this stuff flies in your respective religions, but. Things just got a lot simpler, looks like.

What it *looks* like is Hamas is figuring they lose power unless they pick a big fight.

I'm almost glad someone's clearing it up.

But I'm pretty numb to the news from that neighborhood lately.

Seems you 'book people' got an excuse for everything in those books of yours.

Maybe you can find one to cut it out, one of these days.

People should be judged individually and not based on their religion, associations or otherwise. I get it. Everyone whose gone to school has had this drilled into them by third grade. But sometimes monolithing is necessary. I'm sure there were some Nazis who were quite decent people and opposed WWII but were forced to fight for their government--that doesn't mean the troops at Normandy should have started up chats with individual Germans on the beaches to gauge their personal ideology. Sadly, wars eliminate the potential to judge people individually. Your identity is your allegiance--and if you're on the opposite side, you live and die by it.

The death toll might be 100-to-1 for Israelis to Palestinians but there are also different interest at stake. There are 13.3 million jews worldwide contrast that with 1.5 Billion muslims. That's more than a 100-to-1 differential. Moreover, the Jews aren't just fighting for the individual survival. They're fighting for the survival of their race and religions. If they death toll was 1-to-1, the Israelis would be wiped off the planet. Considering the relatively recent history of the holocaust, this fear is not unfounded.

There is blood on both hands. However, in a town of villains--you cooperate with the nicer ones. This seems to sum up the US approach. Israel may not be blameless but they make a better ally. However mere mudslinging helps no one. Both sides are justified. Each has been hurt and is responding in kind. The key is to break the cycle of violence not perpetuate its justifications.

Israel does not want peace. They want Palestine. They have ruined every single hope for peace and harmony in favor of more land, more resources, more extermination of their neighbors. They have illustrated clearly to anyone who is paying attention that they won't stop the killing and oppression until everything is theirs. This is an extermination campaign and not just against Hamas, the rightful and justly-elected leaders. They are targeting innocents, bombing even small groups waiting for buses, bombing schools they know perfectly well are full of people taking cover from their merciless assaults.

I am completely ashamed of our support for Israel.

Great article!

Great post!!! Fabulous humor, and just the right about of heart. Gotta love the shout out to Stewart. Give Abed a regular column Newsweek!

Article fifteen of the Hamas Charter:

"It is necessary to instill in the minds of the Moslem generations that the Palestinian problem is a religious problem, and should be dealt with on this basis."

Additionally, the very introduction to the charter quotes Imam Hassan al-Banna, stating:
"Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it"

It is fair to say that Israel's response is heavy-handed at the least and disproportionate. And I would doubt that Israeli forces are as cautious as the claim when trying to prevent civilian casualties. But they are not targeting civilians like Hamas has openly claimed to do.

(the response in the comment below was directed at the comment below and not at the article above, the article was great!)

(the response in the comment below was directed at the comment below and not at the article above, the article was great!)

Whoever wrote the note above is a psycho lol, crazy people in this world...so far from the truth!

The three worse books ever written.

1. The koran whose foundations are based on the hallucinations of one long-dead, womanizing, and warmongering Arab

2. The mostly mythical OT and related mumbo jumbo extensions.

3. The highly embellished, sometimes fictionalized NT where Jesus, an illiterate Jewish peasant/carpenter/simple preacher man, was turned into a son of god by P, M, M, L and J.

These three books/operating manuals are, in many respects, the source of the problems of the current Palestine/Israeli conflict. Declaring these books null and void will go a long way in removing the roadblocks to peace not only in the Mideast but also globally.