An Open Letter to Secretary of State Kerry
Dear Secretary Kerry,
Since you became the United States Secretary of State in 2013 you have seemingly spent most of your time in office in the Middle East trying to broker a peace. You started out by trying to champion a two-state solution and tried to work with both sides to make peace. You failed. After your failure and after the murders of Eyal, Gilad, and Naftali by Hamas operatives, the status-quo changed. Despite repeated warnings Hamas would not stop firing rockets indiscriminately at Israeli civilians and Israel decided to finally put an end to this threat against the citizens of Israel, be they Jewish, Christian, Muslim or Druze.
You stood back and “strongly condemned” both sides while Egypt was working on crafting a fair cease-fire. After Hamas rejected said cease-fire you decided that somehow it was your duty to interfere and stop the war. Now you are working with Turkey and Qatar on creating a cease-fire proposal. Need I remind you that Turkey and Qatar are two of the most anti-Israel countries in the world and in fact most of Hamas’ senior leadership reside in Qatar. You decided that your previous calls for “disarmament of Hamas” no longer was a necessity and therefore no longer had to be included in a cease-fire proposal. There’s not many things that Israel,the PA, and Egypt can agree on but how preposterous your current proposals are is one of them. Recently after many Israeli journalists criticized your work with Qatar and Turkey your spokeswoman Jen Psaki said this: “It’s simply not the way partners and allies treat each other.” The Israeli media does not represent the State of Israel because Israel has freedom of the press, unlike Hamas, which makes such an apparent attack on a free press revolting.
Mr. Secretary I would like to remind you what Golda Meir said which applies perfectly to Hamas. “We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children. We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.” Putting a pause to this conflict like you are suggesting will not stop the underlying issues and will not bring peace.
I write this letter as a United States citizen and someone, along with all United States citizens, for whom you are supposed to work in the best interests. I wanted to say that you are not working towards my, Israel, or even the PA’s best interests right now– you seem to only be working towards Hamas’ best interests.