If Israel and Palestine are to achieve peace, misinformation as in a June 11 LTE by Mark Desinger must be corrected. The reality: Not all Palestinians are Hamas. Hamas’ stated goal is not the elimination of Israel, but of apartheid Israel, with a free Palestine. Hamas has offered peace in 1988, 2006, 2008, 2012 and 2017.
Middle East countries want peace. The Palestinians are being denied a country. Palestine has been illegally occupied, its borders rejected, while Israel expands its unlawful settlements.
Palestinians have a right to armed resistance to occupation within the rules of war.
Israel is not minimizing casualties. It commits numerous daily bombings, massacres, assassinations of citizens, and attacks on medical staff, hospitals, mosques, schools, UN facilities, and residences while starving civilians — 90% of whom are near famine. These are war crimes.
Mr. Desinger wrote: “It would be more efficient for Israel to conduct the war like the Allies did against Germany and Japan, but they aren’t.” Really? From Oct to April, Israel dropped 70,000 tons of bombs on Gaza, about five to 10 times the amount dropped on Dresden, Hamburg Tokyo combined! It is the destructive equivalent of nearly five times the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. I do hope it won’t take an atomic bombing for some to recognize a genocide unfolding.
— Ralph Jordan
Anchorage
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