Essay on Cover LEtter

Essay on Cover LEtter Essay on Cover LEtter â€Å"Paper from Ramleh† and Cocked and Locked† â€Å"Paper from Ramleh† by Gasson Kanafani and â€Å"Cocked and Locked† by Etgar Keret are two stories that include interactions between Palestinian and Israeli people. â€Å"Paper from Ramleh† and â€Å"Cocked and Locked† both have similarities in themes such as military presence, revenge, and treatment of Israelis and Palestinians but also the basic aspects of the stories are different from one another. In each of these stories we see mistreatment coming from both the Israelis and the Palestinians. In â€Å"Cocked and Locked† we read about a Palestinian man hurling insults at an Israeli solider who is undeserving of the unfiltered content that is coming from the Palestinians mouth. There was no reason to provoke a verbal altercation. This Palestinian man also injured Meyer’s friend Abutbul, who will never regain consciousness again. â€Å"Paper from Ramleh† portrays the same mistreatment but this time coming from the Israeli soldi ers to the Palestinian civilians. The Israeli soldiers have no respect or moral conscience when it comes to their interactions with the people. Innocent Palestinian lives were taken by the Israeli soldiers, which were completely unwarranted. A similarity between these two stories is the blatant mistreatment of both groups coming from one to the other. While each story may not have involved the same actions, their motives for treating the people badly were the same: hatred between each race. The mistreatment between each people group is different in each story. In â€Å"Cocked and Locked† we see the mistreatment starting from the Palestinian man who is throwing insults at the solider on two different occasions. The first instance with the Palestinian man is in the beginning of the story. The man is trying to antagonize the Meyer by making sexual assumptions about the soldier’s relationship with his commanding general. He also goes onto say how he had sexual intercourse with the soldier’s mother, sister, and his friend Abutbul. The mistreatment coming form the Palestinian man is emotional and verbal abuse compared to the mistreatment in â€Å"Paper from Ramleh† which was physical abuse. The physical abuse that took place in â€Å"Paper from Ramleh† is coming from the Israeli soldiers towards the Palestinian people, which consisted of the shooting of Abu Uthman’s daughter and wife. Both of these deaths were unwarranted and quite frankly did not need to happen. These two instances show the mistreatment of both the Israelis and the Palestinians. In both situations the military presence played a role in the abuse towards both parties. â€Å"Cocked and Locked† and â€Å"Paper from Ramleh† have a military presence that is present and overpowering in each story. In â€Å"Cocked and Locked† we see a military authority from Meyer. After the civilian has badgered him, he aims and sets his gun directly at the m an until he interrupted and ordered to stand down by his commanding general. In this instance, the military presence is being used to defuse the situation by the commanding general. The commanding general, Eli, explains how they cannot use their military force because they would become the same as their enemy. Eli states, â€Å"But if I did that, I’d be just like them† (pg 172). This is a clear picture that these military officers are not going to use their military power for their selfish gain or to make a point against the Palestinians. Comparing this to the military presence in â€Å"Paper from Ramleh†, it is a difference that results in the loss of many lives. The military officers in â€Å"Paper from Ramleh† use their military presence to bring harm upon the Palestinian people. After the shooting of Fatima, her mother was so distraught she could not stop crying. She was ordered to stop crying and when she didn’t she was beaten and shot by one of the soldiers (pg 39). The military presence in this story was as open minded to the idea of bringing peace as Eli was in â€Å"Cocked and Locked†. The last piece that