Stupidity.

Editor,

I take exception to your having characterized as “stupid” last week’s attempt to break the Israelis’ blockade of Gaza, and as your readers’ chief arbiter of what is stupid and what is not I must point out to you that just calling a particular idea or behavior stupid does not make it so.

Activists who confront the brutality and stupidity of cruel powers are routinely jailed or killed. Rachel Corrie, Martin Luther King, and Nelson Mandela are a few examples. So being jailed or killed trying to focus popular outrage on outrageous behavior by a stupid state is by no means stupid, especially if being jailed or killed achieves that goal.

What is stupid, as in the case of Israel’s stupid blockade of Gaza, is refusing to cease treating people with so much hatred and such inhumanity that no impartial observer would ever agree that such behavior is justified, no matter how stubbornly Israelis insist that their behavior is their victims‘ fault.

Smart is finding the courage within yourself, which Israelis refuse to do, to ask people that you revile what you can do and not do in order to foster honest and respectful dialog about your disagreements.

Refusing to talk to Hamas, for example, because Hamas wishes Israel did not exist is not only stupid, but it is also infantile and passive aggressive. Hamas' wish that Israel does not exist is an excuse that Israelis use to justify behaviors of their own that are based on their own wish that the Palestinians did not exist.

Comparing stupidity like this to the willingness of activists to die fighting for social justice indicates to me a misunderstanding of the word "stupid."

Re: "What Happened on the Mavi Marmara?" (6/11/2010)