10/28/00 Editor: The present Israeli-Palestinian conflict brought to my mind a confrontation I witnessed between our cat and a mouse. The cat, named Mulli, always went camping with us. On our first trip I brought cat food, but Mulli preferred her own food and went mousing. Late in the evening when we were in our sleeping bags, we heard the crunching of little bones outside our tent. Nobody felt sorry for the mouse. It was out of sight, out of compassion.
After supper; Mulli wanted to be where it was warm, namely with us, and meowed until we opened the tent flap and let her in. The next morning,while we were breaking camp, Mulli had her breakfast cornered under our car. This time it was not a case of being out of sight and therefore, I would have rescued the mouse. Unfortunately for the mouse, I could not get to it. And so I had to witness an unequal confrontation. The mouse had reared up on its hind paws, put up its front paws as little dukes and fought back. The outcome was inevitable, but now I knew why the cat periodically came home with a scratched-up nose.
Our biased news media makes a big fuss about the bloody nose of the Israelis and ignores that the Palestinians are about to be "eaten." Why else would Ehud Barak invite Ariel Sharon into his government - the Israeli who was ultimately responsible for the massacre of the Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps.
The Israelis have built illegal settlements on confiscated Palestinian land and connected them wIth roads pushed through on confiscated land. They usurped most of the Palestinian water resources and without water; there is no life. I was especially offended by the cartoon in the MNH (Oct. 21) showing Arafat wiping his hands on a bloody headdress.
Yes, the Palestinians who killed the two Israeli solders had bloody hands. How fortunate for the Israelis that tanks, helicopter gunships and missiles kill from afar; otherwise they would drip blood. By the way; nobody can convince me that the Israeli solders "lost their way."
They were the usual Israeli infiltrators who in the past spied, abducted and assassinated.
Again, I am a helpless onlooker who not only had to witness the brave struggle and the death of the little mouse -the Palestinians - but my tax dollar also has to pay for the weapons with which they are killed.