The key to changing Middle East policy is to hear more from real people, not ideologues or Richard Holbrooke. Yaser Wishah co-owns the Xpress Fuel and Lube in Olathe, Kansas. Yesterday the Kansas City Star bravely published his Op-Ed, which begins:
Chinese government from returning to America. Or if an American
traveled to Iran and was then forbidden from reaching an airport to
come home.
This happened to me at the hands of Israel, supposedly America’s closest ally in the Middle East.
I
am a U.S. citizen and small-business owner in Olathe. I am also a
Palestinian born in Gaza. I traveled to Gaza last December to care for
my ill father. Israel trapped me there for four months.
Notice the comments section is pretty balanced. It includes someone saying wisely of Rachel Corrie's death in 2003: "She might have been 110 lbs, any one of those Israeli soldiers could
have picked her up on their back and carried her out of there but
instead they ran her over with a multi- ton armoured bulldozer."
On Sunday, The Star also published a wonderful piece by Scott Canon about Wishah's ordeal, including the fact that he had to wait three months in Egypt before getting in to see his father, who is 90 and half-blind. Canon tells this American story:
At 23, he turned to the United States as a path to a better life. He
obtained a student visa to study languages in Houston — something he
can’t imagine happening in this post-Sept. 11 age — and he gradually
made himself into an American.
He eventually ran out of money for
school and found work buying, selling and repairing cars. Wishah
married an American woman and divorced. In 2002, a friend enticed him
to move to the Kansas City area to run a gas station and repair shop
while they bought and sold cars on the side.
I love my country. We respect the rights of minorities, including Jews like me, and even Palestinians.
