Readers React: Israeli-Palestinian conflict: the pointlessness of ‘in another world’
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To the editor: In another world, many young American soldiers could have been good friends of young Japanese soldiers. But Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.
In another world, Columbine students might have been friends with two classmates who murdered them with automatic rifles.
The front-page article on violence between Palestinian and Israeli youths opens with, “In another sort of world, these two boys might have been friends.” This implies that victim and attacker are only a matter of address. In another world.
That world doesn’t exist. Everybody gets angry, and many people hate. But you don’t get rid of either or both by murder.
A crime is a crime. Victims and attackers are not humanely equal. A boy who plunges a knife into another person is an attempted murderer. Neighbors who send bombs into other neighbors’ backyards are criminals.
Law enforcement, or “security,” is not the enemy. The enemy is the enemy.
Joe Siegman, Los Angeles
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