I would like to respond to Jonathan Kahane’s guest column of Dec. 29, “Haunted by questions with no good answers.” His column presents a series of rhetorical questions as a conceit to disguise his ideological defense of Israel’s genocidal bombardment of Gaza, which has claimed the lives of over 20,000 Palestinian women, men, and children. His casual dehumanization of Palestinians as willing hosts to a metastasizing “cancer” and “plague” that must be “entirely destroyed” betrays a resolute standpoint, despite his insistence that he is “haunted by questions.”

I would like to correct three among numerous distortions presented in the column.

First, Kahane asks, “How can I convey how awful and blind it is to blame Israel for trying to retaliate for the murder, torture, rape, and destruction?” Nowhere in his column does he mention the 75-year history of Israel’s apartheid regime that rules over a segregated and fragmented Palestinian population, one characterized by indefinite imprisonments — including of many children — extrajudicial killing with impunity, and generalized terror.

To adapt Hannah Arendt’s formulation, Palestinians do not have the right to have rights under Israel’s regime. To disregard this pre-Oct. 7 context is to intentionally mislead.

Second, Kahane asks, “Why is it during all these years of strife, that groups of Palestinians unsympathetic to Hamas terror have not participated in protests, rallies, or demonstrations against them?” Is this a serious question?

Why not ask the more relevant question of what becomes of Palestinians who engage in “protests, rallies, or demonstrations” against Israeli terror throughout Palestine — not just in Gaza, but in the West Bank, where Hamas is not in power. Does he avoid this question because he knows that the answer to all nonviolent Palestinian protest is merciless repression and violence?

The nonviolent boycott, divestment and sanctions movement [BDS], which was modeled on protests of South African apartheid, was criminalized as antisemitic. During the nonviolent March of Return in Gaza in 2018-2019, Israeli forces used sniper fire to kill 233 Palestinians and injure thousands more.

Palestinians do not have the right to protest their colonial oppressors, and all acts of self-defense are demonized as terrorism. Under Israeli rule, Palestinians’ only legitimate recourse to occupation is to die or leave.

Third and finally, Kahane introduces the analogy of the U.S. justification for using nuclear bombs in Japan. He asks: “How does one condone America dropping two atomic bombs on Japanese cities in order to save more American (and Japanese) lives in the long run but condemn Israel’s actions in Gaza?”

As a descendant of Japanese victims and survivors of the bombing of Hiroshima, I wish to correct the absurd and dangerous mythology that killing of hundreds of thousands of civilians was intended to spare lives. When Truman announced the bombing of Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, he stated that “The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor. They have been repaid many fold.”

Truman never justified the bombing by claiming it would save American lives. It was revenge. The popular assertion that the bombs “saved American lives” was a retroactive attempt to rationalize the horror, a justification that has been widely discredited. Therefore, if we want to draw an analogy between Dec. 7, 1941 and Oct. 7, 2023, perhaps we should be reckoning with the fact that annihilating an unarmed and trapped civilian population out of revenge is a crime against humanity.

Iyko Day lives in Northampton.