Following her column in the Sept. 3 Gazette, columnist J. M. Sorrell is badly in need of a history lesson [“Moral inversion insanity“]. Zionists did not “accept the opportunity for self-sovereignty” in Palestine, they forced out the British with repeated terrorist attacks, then forcibly evicted tens of thousands of Palestinians from homes in their half of the partitioned country. It is true that they created a modern, prosperous country with many great achievements whose citizens (those inside Israel proper) are treated better than anywhere else in the Middle East. But Zionism had a fatal flaw: people were already living in the new Jewish homeland, and the terrible violence of Israel’s founding has come back to haunt it.
There have been many opportunities to turn away from violence, but the leadership on both sides has over time become more extreme in their commitment to removing the “other” from the land and in their willingness to embrace violence in their commitment to that removal. I will not defend Hamas: everything Sorrell says about them is true. But she doesn’t recognize that the current Israeli government has descended to the level of Hamas. It is led by a cynical opportunist, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who brought the worst people in Israeli politics into his government and continued a brutal war in order to keep himself in power. His ministers are open in their desire to annex both Gaza and the West Bank, leaving those who live there with nowhere to go. His government enables settlers who are committing unspeakable acts against citizens of the West Bank. And his government has engaged in a program of deliberate starvation to rid Gaza of its citizens.
For centuries Jews everywhere have been on the wrong end of government power and suffered the consequences. We know what racism, hatred and injustice feel like; it is unconscionable that Jews who have achieved government power should wield it in such a way.
Joseph Blumenthal
Northampton