Letters to the Editor: Israel’s “New” War

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, November/December 2023, pp. 6-7

Letters to the Editor

ISRAEL’S “NEW” WAR

Once again, we watch in horror at the senseless loss of Israeli and Palestinian lives on our TV screens. And once again, the Palestinians are called the “terrorists” and the Israelis are labeled the “victims,” when in actuality these labels should be reversed.

The Palestinians have been under a brutal military occupation for years. Palestinian children have been indiscriminately kidnapped out of their homes. Palestinian homes and complete villages have been demolished and Israel has been annexing Palestine’s land for decades. 

So, should anyone be surprised at the eruption of violence in the Holy Land? Hell no!

So, who’s at fault? I’d say the Israeli government is for committing all the previously stated atrocities. They have thumbed their nose at countless U.N. resolutions. They have thumbed their nose at human rights organizations around the world—even inside Israel—that have determined Israel is an apartheid state. They continue to murder Palestinians with impunity. 

The media in the United States is at fault for their one-sided, pro-Israel biased reporting. The vast majority of the reporters say this is a “surprise attack.” It’s no surprise. Anyone living under these conditions would react in the exact same way. 

But above all, it’s the U.S. government’s fault for their blank check, both politically and financially, in support of the apartheid government in Israel. Most of our elected officials have traded both Palestinian and Israeli lives for campaign contributions for years.

I know many Palestinian people. They don’t want to support terrorists, but they don’t want to be terrorized, which they have been for more than 70 years. 

Today, Netanyahu says “We are at war,” but the truth is, Israel has been at war against the Palestinian people ever since 1948.

—Bob Horner, Orlando, FL

THE HISTORY OF TERRORISM IN ISRAEL

If anything is clear as a result of the horrible terrorist attack upon civilians in Israel by Hamas and the Israeli response, largely against civilians in Gaza, it is the need for a Palestinian state. Israel has occupied the West Bank in violation of international law for more than 50 years and the government of Binyamin Netanyahu now speaks of annexing it and expelling as many Palestinians as possible. Israel calls itself a democracy, yet millions of Palestinians have no right to vote or civil rights.

Sadly, Israel is a theocracy with no religious freedom for non-Orthodox Jews. Reform and Conservative rabbis cannot perform weddings, conduct funerals or have their conversions recognized. Beyond this, Zionism itself has a long history of terrorism. At the time of Israel’s creation, massacres of Palestinians were conducted in many Palestinian villages such as Deir Yassin, Lydda and Tantura to cause Palestinians to flee. Privately, Zionist leaders admitted that they were engaging in a form of ethnic cleansing. David Ben-Gurion told Nahum Goldmann, the Zionist leader, “Why would the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader, I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural....There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: We have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?”

Jewish moral and ethical values have been rejected by those who wield power in Israel at the present time. Those Jewish voices who warned the world about where Zionism would lead—Judah Magnes, Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt and a host of others—are now seen as prophetic. What is needed now is the creation of a Palestinian state which can live peacefully with the state of Israel. Unfortunately, Hamas and those who support it is a form of terrorism reminiscent of the early Zionists. Its goal is not democracy and religious freedom for all, but something far different, as we can see by viewing developments in Iran, which supports and finances Hamas.

—Allan C. Brownfeld, Alexandria, VA

HORRIFIC ACCOUNTS OF ISRAELI VIOLENCE

The current right-wing extremist government under Binyamin Netanyahu is allowing for thousands of new settlements by Zionist settlers upon land promised to the Palestinians for their sovereign state. The intention is clear—while they have the power, this government intends to complete the effort begun by David Ben-Gurion: a Greater Israel that is free of Palestinians.

I have friends who live in, and have also visited, the occupied territories as witnesses for Palestinian villages on the daily attacks, violence and humiliations they suffer. A scientist friend recently told me of deciding to board a bus reserved for Jewish settlers along with young Palestinian students, emulating U.S. Freedom Riders in the 1960s. The bus was stopped at a checkpoint and all of the Palestinians were carried off the bus and beaten by soldiers. They were taken to the headquarters and placed in a barbed-wire pen, without bathroom facilities and without water. As they talked, a 19-year-old soldier pointed his rifle at them, telling them to shut up. My friend engaged the soldier and the soldier agreed to ask his commander if they could use the bathroom facilities inside. The commander said my friend could do so, but not the young students. When my friend refused to have a privilege denied to his students, the commander relented. 

My other friend lived in a Palestinian village where she suffered physical attacks by Jewish settlers, was shot at with live ammunition by IDF troops and hit with a rubber bullet. She documented midnight raids of homes, the spraying of a noxious substance on village streets and roads, the destruction of crops, the stealing of a house from a villager and the arrest of children. 

Another friend who is now dead was aboard the USS Liberty when Israeli air force and naval units repeatedly attacked it. A torpedo punctured the hull near him, and despite a permanently crippled leg, he crawled along the ceiling pipes as his room filled up with water. For the rest of his life I knew him to be permanently scarred, physically and mentally by what he endured at the hands of Israel. 

It is time to re-assess our relationship with Israel, as many Americans, including Jewish-Americans, are doing. If we cannot demand equal rights for all Israelis and protection for the Palestinians under their iron fist, how can we criticize any other nation that engages in such criminal behavior? The basic truth is this: if we protect the Palestinians we will save the Israelis from their worst selves, helping them to truly become a democracy, and saving them from a future in which it will be impossible for them to continue being a safe haven as a Jewish state.

—Dan Callaghan, New Port Richey, FL

REMEMBERING CHEF RAMZI CHOUEIRI

I was terribly dismayed to learn in your October issue that Chef Ramzi Choueiri died of a sudden heart attack in mid-June. During my two-year assignment in Lebanon, he quickly became one of my all-time favorite people. I was in awe of the self-help educational and technical training organization, Al-Kafa’at, that his parents established and set about getting funded so that he and his sister Myriam and their colleagues could create a prosthetics training program. It came into fruition several months after I left Lebanon and retired from the foreign service. Chef Ramzi was simply a national treasure who devoted much of his life to preparing disadvantaged young adults for careers in the culinary arts and food services. I truly admired his commitment to their empowerment and enjoyed an occasional lunch that they had prepared. It was very thoughtful of you to alert Washington Report readers to his legacy accomplishments as a renowned Middle East gastronomist, chef, author, teacher, television personality and administrator.

—George Aldridge, Bissen, Luxembourg