To the Editor:
The unstated implication of Ilya Feoktistov '06's most recent op-ed ("Loving the Bomb: How Palestinian Society Glorifies Extremism," Jan. 25) -- that Israel holds the moral high ground in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- is laughable. Mr. Feoktistov, however, makes a compelling case for the pervasiveness of Palestinian extremism. But he does not get to the real purpose of his op-ed until the last paragraph, when he informs us that, "like it or not," Americans are "in the same boat with Israel, adrift amid a storm of Islamist triumphalism and Arab nationalism."
Mr. Feoktistov's op-ed is, in fact, a sales pitch, calibrated to yoke America to Israel. He would have us believe that we're facing a "storm," not a group of ideologically polarized humans, because people don't try to find a way to live alongside a storm, they huddle together against it.
If we choose to believe Mr. Feoktistov, we have no choice but to continue giving massive military and political aid to Israel, our fellow-castaways.
Unfortunately for Mr. Feoktistov, his metaphor breaks down immediately. If we were really in the "same boat" as Israel, we would sink if Israel did. This statement is true, of course, only in converse: without American aid, Israel could not long survive in its present state. Seen in this light, Israel is a stowaway trying to pass itself off as a passenger.
If Mr. Feoktistov wishes to begin his op-ed by scolding "cognitive egocentrists" who have "a tendency to project [their] own mind-set upon others," he should not be so brazen in his attempt to liken the American situation to that of Israel. And for all Mr. Feoktistov's pretensions to intellectual sophistication, he still sees those opposed to him as a faceless, dehumanized horde, which is the same problem he calumnies in the Palestinian extremists he writes about.
Despite hypocritical sales pitches such as Mr. Feoktistov's, America is free to determine its own foreign policy. Israelis should realize that Muslims are not a "storm"; failing that, they should get their own boat.
