I would like to thank you and your staff for your correspondence and your total disregard for my opinion. I am honored that you didn’t take the time to read even the subject line of my emails or attend to even one phrase of my phone call. You and your staff must be very well trained in either filtering out any comment from a constituent that does not echo your own position or completely disregarding the messages your constituents are trying to relay. This is truly a clear demonstration of representational democracy in action, and I am proud to be a meaningless cog in the state’s machine.
Despite the indifference your response suggests, I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps you intended to send a message that would express some minimal level of awareness of my opinions, but you misplaced it. So I will try once more to make my position clear, and with any luck your next letter will demonstrate that someone in your office at least attempted to address my concerns.
First off, you state in your letter, “I appreciate hearing from you and share your concern for Israel's security and the safety of its citizens.” I clearly wrote and called in regards to the security and safety of Palestinian civilians. I know this is an easy mistake to make: Palestinian…Israel pretty much exactly the same, i.e. a group of people living in fear of their neighbors and feeling hated and forgotten by the rest of the world. And while I agree with your conjecture that “No cause or grievance can justify the deliberate killing of innocent civilians,” I am deeply concern about the context of this sentence, as it was couched in terms referring strictly to Israelis while flagrantly disregarding the deliberate killing of innocent Palestinian civilians seeking shelter in UN schools and hospitals, for timely example.
Secondly, I think you accidentally deleted a sentence or two in the following paragraph:
- The Israeli people deserve safety and security. Palestinians should have a safe and sovereign homeland and a voice in deciding their own destiny. But these goals for Palestinians cannot be achieved at the expense of Israel's sovereignty or the safety of its citizens. The establishment of a Palestinian state must come through peaceful negotiations, not violence.
But I think one of my greatest concerns is the pride you take in cosponsoring S. Res. 10, the resolution I called explicitly to denounce. I find this resolution one-sided, reactionary, and lacking in vision. Rather than focusing on finding real solutions and acknowledging the humanitarian crisis caused by reckless bombing of civilian sites, it persists in our policy of blind, unilateral support for Israeli, whose adherence to the ceasefire is also dubious at best and whose track record of listening to the UN is spotty at best.
Furthermore, the $30+ billion military aid package that you mention in your letter is not something we should take pride in for multiple reasons, one obvious one being the current recession. Nor do I want you to support such packages. Perhaps you forgot previous letters I sent in which I fervently questioned the wisdom of such aid in light of other needs, e.g., stemming the rise of HIV/AIDS in Africa or reconstructing Afghanistan and Iraq. Finally, you express approval of President Obama’s former statements for support of Israel. I have also been writing him since he was a senator expressing my opinions against this position. I hope he and his staff listen better to the opinions and ideas of their constituents.
Please be(come) aware that, even if American politicians are of one mind about Israel/Palestine, the American people are not. We question our history and our future in the Middle East, and many of us doubt the intelligence and sincerity of our current policies. Seeing as how our names are on the bombs Israel is buy from the US to drop on Gaza, we would like to have our dissent acknowledged. This conflict and our position in it are not improving the situation for anyone. We have not helped to bring more safety to Israelis. We have not helped support the sovereignty of Palestinians. We have not improved our security abroad either. In fact, I would contend that we have undermined all of these goals by not approaching the situation with a well-rounded perspective that takes both sides’ humanitarian needs into account in equal measure.
I hope this letter more fully explains my position and helps to direct our conversation more clearly. I look forward to your response.
Sincerely,
Meredith Larson
Chicago, IL
This letter made my day!
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