Letters to the Editor

Dissension and division in the Mideast

Thank you for publishing David Nassar’s exceptionally good letter (“No ‘zero-sum game,’” Wednesday). He summed it up quite well by saying, “Peace is not an ethnic birthright.” The most important function of the peace advocates is merely to be witnesses to the horrors wrought by Israel’s racist war on the oppressed and persecuted Palestinians.

Those International Solidarity Movement peace advocates are today’s most valiant heroes in bravely standing up to a well-armed and racist nation and doing what they can for real justice and a lasting peace.

How dare we accuse any Palestinian or their pro-peace supporters of being terrorists when Israel sends in helicopter gunships and “accidentally” kills innocent Palestinian women and children with brutal missile attacks.

No one should be discriminated against because of race or religion, and it is insane that superpower America willingly arms and empowers Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Holy Land.

Zionism really is racism, and pretending it is not has only misled many otherwise decent people into thinking and doing despicable things. There is no security in institutionalized racist hatred; there is only a continuing holocaust and flagrant violations of both moral and international law. There is nothing but chaos, suffering and pain on both sides of Israel’s apartheid walls.

ANNE SELDEN ANNAB

Mechanicsburg, Pa.

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Jack Rutner says former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak was willing to give up almost all of Judea and Samaria and Gaza (“No ‘zero-sum game’”). Not so. He was going to keep 9 percent of the very best of this stolen land and set other conditions that were totally unacceptable. Incidentally, the names Judea and Samaria were correct 2,000 years ago, not today. Also, having lived in a place 2,000 years ago does not mean the land is still yours. If this were true, the land also would belong to the Amorites who were there before the Israelites.

He says Yasser Arafat wants to eliminate Israel and has launched a war of terrorism to that end, and that this is Nazism by another name. Well, Israel has effectively eliminated 78 percent of Palestine and illegally annexed land for settlements and did this partly by using terrorists to clear out the native population; the terrorist groups were Haganah, Stern Gang and the Irgun Zeva’i Le’umi. I therefore presume that Israeli actions count as Nazism by another name.

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