Letter: BDS, ISIS, Hamas Don’t Care About Palestinians
Anti-Israel groups aren't interested in building anything for the people they say they support.
“Dry Bones” got it right (“In Gaza, ISIS and Hamas Are in a Fight to the Death,” Jan. 19 cartoon). Neither ISIS nor Hamas seeks to improve the lot of the Palestinian people. They are content to see the Palestinian “refugees” (overwhelmingly third- and fourth-generation descendants of Arabs who fled Arab-initiated wars) remain in refugee limbo, used as a propaganda tool to delegitimize Israel, and kept poor and desperate so that they acquiesce to being used as human shields in Gaza and are easily incited to attempt to kill Israelis, earning their families stipends from the Palestinian Authority.
What is true of ISIS and Hamas is equally true of the New Orleans Palestinian Solidarity Committee, which hoodwinked the New Orleans City Council into passing a pro-BDS resolution (“BDS Strikes in New Orleans,” Jan. 19).
Jewish communities in Judaea and Samaria (called “the West Bank” when Jordan illegally occupied the areas between 1948 and 1967) take up only 2 percent of the land in dispute between Israel and the Palestinians. Businesses in those Jewish communities offer much-needed employment to Palestinians, at the same pay level and with the same benefits as those of Israeli employees. In addition, they are places where Israelis and Palestinians can meet on a one-to-one basis, a necessary first step toward realizing the dream of two states for two peoples — a Palestine in which the “refugees” have become productive citizens coexisting peacefully with the nation-state of the Jews.
That is not the goal of NOPSC or others pushing the BDS agenda. They should not be described as “pro-Palestinian groups,” but as “BDS proponents.” Space permitting, “anti-Israel, BDS proponents” would be even better.
— Toby F. Block, Atlanta
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