In his recent historic speech at the Cairo University, President Barack Obama was addressing the Muslim world, reaching out to Muslims, Palestinians and Israelis alike.

With his Buchenwald visit in Germany, he paid homage to the six million Jewish victims slaughtered by the Nazis during the Holocaust in the name of the so-called “Final Solution” — the greatest crime in the history of mankind.

After centuries of persecution and anti-Semitism, the Jewish people finally returned to their ancestral homeland and re-established their own state of Israel in 1948.

Nobody questions the great anguish and unbelievable suffering of the Palestinian people, partially brought upon themselves by tolerating, in their midst, fanatical extremists who are recklessly determined to destroy Israel and kill innocent men, women and children with their indiscriminate missile attacks and suicide bombings.

As the president pointed out, the resultant cycle of tension, suspicion, hatred, senseless violence and discord must end. A rational and humane solution must be found. The fundamentalist extremists, with their totalitarian ideology and terrorism, cannot be allowed to co-opt the just aspirations of the Palestinian people.

Klaus D. Kuck, Lewiston