FURTHER CORRESPONDENCES BY MARC SUSSELMAN PART 7

18 October 2023

MS said:

I saw the same report on the PBS News Hour that LFC refers to. The military analyst, an expert in explosive patterns, was convinced that the burned cars and the configuration of the crater caused by the explosive were inconsistent with a strike by Israel. Rather, it indicated a rocket launched from within Gaza which went awry, and burst into flames upon collision. In addition, Israel intercepted a radio communication by members of Islamic Jihad indicating they had made an error. But the Arab world will reject these facts and continue to blame Israel, because it suits their narrative.

LFC asserts that the true facts regarding who is responsible for the hospital tragedy is irrelevant. What is relevant, he states, is the background of the deaths of Palestinian civilians caused by Israel’s bombing campaign aimed at destroying Hamas. If we are going to look at the deaths of innocent Palestinians caused by Israel’s bombing campaign against Hamas, it is fitting to look at how many Israelis have been deliberately targeted by Palestinian terrorists over the years. Between September 1993 and September 2005, 1,715 Israelis were killed by Palestinian terrorists. Between September 2005 and August, 2023, another 344 Israelis were killed in terrorist attacks by Palestinians. Some examples: On August 30, 1999, Yehiel Finfeter, 25, and Sharon Steinmetz, 21, were murdered while hiking in the Megiddo region; on August 20, 1998, Rabbi Shlomo Ra’anan, 63, was stabbed to death in the bedroom of his home in Hebron; on July 26, 1996, Uri Munk, 53, and his daughter-in-law, Rachel Munk, 24, were killed in a drive-by shooting. Rachel’s husband was critically wounded and died the next day. On October 6, 2000, Bachor Jean, 54, was killed when rocks were thrown at his vehicle while he was traveling from Haifa to Rishon Lezion. The rocks shattered his windshield and struck him in the chest. He succumbed the next day. On October 7, 2001, Yair Mordechai, 43, of Kibbutz Shelhhot was killed when a Palestinian suicide bomber detonated a bomb strapped to his body near the entrance to the kibbutz; On December 20, 2002, Rabbi Yitzhak Arama, 40, was shot and killed while driving with his wife and six children to attend a pre-wedding celebration in Afula. The Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility; on November 10, 2002, Revital Ohayon, 34, her two sons, 5 and 4, Yitzhak Dori, 44, and Tirza Damari, 42, were killed when a terrorist infiltrated their kibbutz and opened fire. The Fatah Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade claimed responsibility for the attack. And the list goes on and on, year after year -27 Israelis killed in 2006; 13 Israelis killed in 2007; 34 Israelis killed in 2008; 6 Israelis killed in 2009; 8 Israelis killed in 2010; 20 Israelis killed in 2011; 7 Israelis killed in 2012; 7 Israelis killed in 2013; 42 Israelis killed in 2014; 36 Israelis killed in 2015; 33 Israelis killed in 2016; 15 Israelis killed in 2017; 13 Israelis killed in 2018; 11 Israelis killed in 2019; 3 Israelis killed in 2020; 17 Israelis killed in 2021; 24 Israelis killed in 2022; and 28 Israelis killed in 2023, prior to the massacre on October 7. But Israel is accused of administering an apartheid regime because it erected a wall on the Green Line to protect Israelis from Palestinian terrorist attacks.

Jews emigrating to Palestine in response to Theodor Herzl’s prompting, after he witnessed the humiliation of Alfred Dreyfuss, wrongfully accused of treason, did not find a land densely populated by Arabs. Nor did they find an independent country known as “Palestine,” and its inhabitants referred to as “Palestinians.” What they found was a desolate land managed from afar by the Ottoman Turks, Turks who abused the Arabs living there and exploited them. This abuse and exploitation, although resented by the Arab population, did not give rise to any revolt. The Arabs and the Turks, were, after all, both Muslim. The Jews emigrating to the territory of Palestine, forty years before the Holocaust, found nonarable land and insect infested swamps. The Jews put their shoulders to the wheel, drained the swamps and converted the arid land into orange groves. The statement that they made the desert bloom is not just a poetic metaphor. The Jews did this; not the indigenous Arabs. The Jews built hospitals, schools, and industries, and offered to share their bounty with the Arabs, to many of whom they provided gainful employment. The Jews purchased tracts of land from the Turks, who were absentee landlords. Being capitalists, they purchased the land. The idea that they “stole” the land by using capital to buy it is a fiction that only anti-capitalist Marxists could embrace.

As more and more Jews joined the Zionist movement and emigrated to Palestine, resentment among the Arab residents began to grow. They were willing to tolerate exploitation by the Turks, but living side by side with Jews they found intolerable. A leader emerged among them named al-Kassam. Al-Kassam established a series of cells advocating armed struggle against the Jews. He preached Islam and trained adherents in methods to kill Jews. In April 1931, his followers killed three kibbutz members returning from cultivating their fields. In January 1932, a Jewish farmer was killed in front of his door. In March, 1932, another Jewish farmer was killed. In December, 1932, another Jewish farmer and his 8-year old son were killed by a bomb being thrown into their home. All these anti-Semitic events are documented. It was not the Jews who threw the first blow.

After WWI, the defeat of the Ottoman Turks, and the creation of the British mandate, tensions between Arabs and Jews began to intensify. Palestine was still not a country owned by the Arabs. No country named “Palestine” existed. This is not simply a legalistic technicality. It is a fact. With the conflict between the Arabs and the Jews intensifying, and the bloodshed increasing, and British soldiers being killed, Britain finally threw up its hands and said, “We’re leaving.” The newly formed UN, confronted with this bloody conflict between Arabs and Jews, passed a resolution to partition Palestine between them. Today, Al Jazeera criticizes the proposed partition as not being fair to the Arabs, as favoring the Jews. But that was not the objection the Arabs made at the time. Their objection was to the very existence of a Jewish state altogether. The Jews accepted the partition; the Arabs rejected the proposed partition, not claiming that it was inequitable, but vowing to prevent the creation of a Jewish state altogether, determined to drive the Jews into the sea.

Had the Palestinians accepted the proposed partition, rather than being committed to the destruction of the Jewish state, they would have had their freedom and their Palestinian state 75 years ago. Instead, their hatred of Jews – and there is no other word for it – condemned them to 75 years of continuous bloodshed. Since Israel’s success in its War for Independence, there have been two more wars in which the Arab states surrounding Israel invaded it, again bent on driving the Jews into the sea. Before and after the Oslo accords there have been numerous efforts by Israel to reach a two-state peace settlement with the Palestinians, all of which were sabotaged by the Palestinians’ refusal to drop their demand for a right of return of all of the Palestinian refugees, which now includes not only the Palestinians who abandoned their homes in 1948 – at the urging of the Arab states – but includes their children and grandchildren as well, which would result in the disappearance of Israel as a Jewish state – the only Jewish state in a world in which there are 47 Arab/Muslim states. But one Jewish state is one too many.

Immediately after the Oslo accords were concluded, Hamas blew up a bus in Tel Aviv. At the Camp David summit in 2000, Ehud Barak agreed to essentially everything the Palestinians were demanding, except the right of return. Yassir Arafat refused to agree to an end to hostilities if Barak’s proposal were accepted, and then refused to sign. A settlement agreement without a commitment to end hostilities is no settlement agreement. And still, it is Israel’s fault that the two-state solution has not been realized and it is the Israelis who are oppressing the Palestinians, who have repeatedly rejected the key to peace which would have liberated them from their so-called prison.

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19 October 2023

MS said:

“If one has to choose a side in this kind of conflict, it's best to opt for the side of human rights, rationality, decency and non-violence and neither Israel nor the Palestinian leadership represents that side.”

So the use of violence, even in self-defense, is immoral and not on the side of “decency.” If someone comes at s. wallerstein with a knife, and the only way for him to deter the attack is to use violence, decency demands that s. wallerstein not defend himself, and let himself be stabbed. Likewise, decency demands that Israel not use violence in self-defense against Hamas, which two weeks ago murdered, beheaded, and raped Israeli citizens. The use of violence, under any circumstances, is, after all, not “decent.” More liberal buillshit.

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20 October 2023

MS said:

Marc M. Susselman, J.D., M.P.H. 43834 Brandywyne Rd., Canton, Michigan 48187 marcsusselman@gmail.com

October 18, 2023

Via Email

Prof. Judith Butler University of California, Berkeley Berkeley, CA 94720-4206

Prof. Butler:

I have read your recent article, “The Compass of Mourning,” relating to the recent terrorist attack by Hamas against Israel, and your critique of the statement issued by the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee which places responsibility for Hamas’s actions involving the brutal murder and abduction of Israeli citizens solely on Israel. To your credit, you take issue with the Committee’s warped view of the situation, stating: “It is wrong to apportion responsibility in that way, and nothing should exonerate Hamas from responsibility for the hideous killings they have perpetrated.”

You proceed to state, however: “At the same time, this group and its members do not deserve to be blacklisted or threatened. They are surely right to point to the history of violence in the region: ‘From systematized land seizures to routine airstrikes, arbitrary detentions to military checkpoints, and enforced family separations to targeted killings, Palestinians have been forced to live in a state of death, both slow and sudden.’” So, on the one hand, you condemn Hamas’s brutality, while on the other hand you assert that it is understandable as a product of Israel’s unjust treatment of the Palestinians. You acknowledge that, “[T]o understand how an event has come about, or what meaning it has, we have to learn some history.” You proceed, however, to present a distorted, non-factual history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, placing the burden of the current deplorable situation on the Israelis, as if the Palestinians’ exercise of their free will (putting aside the metaphysical discussion of whether any of us have free will) had nothing to do with their present plight.

I am not uncritical of Israel’s policies, and agree with you that criticism of Israel does not equate to anti-Semitism, but it cannot be denied that often criticism of Israel serves as a proxy for anti-Semitism. Any discussion of Israel’s responsibility in the conflict must begin with the question whether Israel has a right to exist at all. And such a discussion cannot be objectively addressed without acknowledging the historical ties which the Jewish people, including your ancestors, have had with the territory now designated as Palestine. One does not have to accept the Tanakh as an accurate historical account, or that Moses received the Torah from God at Mt. Sinai, or that Joshua led the former Hebrew slaves into the Promised Land and biblical account of the conquest of Canaan to recognize the historically accurate connection of the Jewish people to the current geographic territory designated as Palestine. Indeed, one can be an atheist and deny the biblical account altogether. But it will still be undeniable – confirmed by archeological and documentary evidence - that from 800 BCE forward, there were a people who referred to themselves as Hebrews, who occupied a kingdom of Judea, who followed an monotheistic ethical code which included the Ten Commandments, whatever its source, who worshipped at a Temple in Jerusalem involving animal sacrifice, which split into two kingdoms, Isarel in the North, and Judah in the South; that the Northern kingdom was conquered by the Assyrians in 722 BCE, that the Southern kingdom was conquered by the Babylonians in 586 BCE, with the destruction of the First Temple and its population driven into exile to Babylon, where they remained until the Babylonians were conquered by King Cyrus, who allowed the Hebrews to return to Judea and build the Second Temple; followed by conquest by the Greeks, the revolt of the Maccabees, the despotic reign of the Hasmoneans, the conquest by Rome, which named the territory Palestrina and the Hebrews, Jews, the two revolts in 70 and `135 CE, the destruction of the Second Temple, and the Diaspora. None of these events are in doubt. They are well documented.

If that ended the connection of the Jews to the territory now designated Palestine, the right of the Jewish people to have their own country located there would be subject to legitimate debate. But it did not. Jews continued to live in Palestrina even after the destruction of the Second Temple. They were not all exiled in the Diaspora. Most of the people who became Christians, followers of Christ, were converted Jews. But not all Jews converted to Christianity. There were no Arabs there, and certainly no Muslims. The Jews continued to live in Palestine. They were there after 632 CE with the founding of Islam by Mohammed. They were there when the Muslims conquered Palestine, conquered North Africa, invaded Spain, until their advance was stopped at the Battle of Tours in 1032. Jews were still in Palestine this entire time. They were there during the Crusades, when Richard I conquered Jerusalem. They were there after the Crusades, during the Middle Ages, through the conquest by the Ottoman Turks. And they were there before Herzl founded the Zionist movement in 1895, after witnessing the public humiliation of Alfred Dreyfus, wrongfully accused of treason, and urged European Jews to emigrate to Palestine and join their brethren, already there. During all these centuries, throughout Europe Jews were persecuted and reviled, exiled from England by King Edward in 1290; killed and tortured during the Crusades; exiled from Spain, or forced to convert to Catholicism, in 1492 in Spain, and then again in Portugal in 1497; confined in ghettoes, beginning in Italy in 1555; subjected to repeated pogroms in Czarist Russia. Moreover, their existence in the Muslim dominated countries was not bucolic. They were treated as second-class citizens, referred to as dhimmi. I know you already know all of this, but I thought it helpful to remind you.

Those who took Herzl’s warning seriously began to emigrate to Palestine in growing numbers. Jews emigrating to Palestine in response to Herzl’s prompting did not find a land densely populated by Arabs. Nor did they find an independent country known as “Palestine,” and its inhabitants referred to as “Palestinians.” What they found was a desolate land managed from afar by the Ottoman Turks, Turks who abused the Arabs living there and exploited them. This abuse and exploitation, although resented by the Arab population, did not give rise to any revolt. The Arabs and the Turks, were, after all, both Muslim. The Jews emigrating to the territory of Palestine, forty years before the Holocaust, found nonarable land and insect infested swamps. The Jews put their shoulders to the wheel, drained the swamps and converted the arid land into orange groves. The statement that they made the desert bloom is not just a poetic metaphor. The Jews did this; not the indigenous Arabs. The Jews built hospitals, schools, and industries, and offered to share their bounty with the Arabs, to many of whom they provided gainful employment. The Jews purchased tracts of land from the Turks, who were absentee landlords. Being capitalists, they purchased the land. The idea that they “stole” the land by using capital to buy it is a fiction that only anti-capitalist Marxists could embrace.

As more and more Jews joined the Zionist movement and emigrated to Palestine, resentment among the Arab residents began to grow. They were willing to tolerate exploitation by the Turks, but living side by side with Jews they found intolerable. A leader emerged among them named al-Kassam. Al-Kassam established a series of cells advocating armed struggle against the Jews. He preached Islam and trained adherents in methods to kill Jews. In April 1931, his followers killed three kibbutz members returning from cultivating their fields. In January 1932, a Jewish farmer was killed in front of his door. In March, 1932, another Jewish farmer was killed. In December, 1932, another Jewish farmer and his 8-year old son were killed by a bomb being thrown into their home. All these anti-Semitic events are documented. It was not the Jews who threw the first blow.

At this point, the question must be asked: Did Jews not have a right to emigrate to Palestine? Were they somehow violating the rights of Arabs by doing so? Did not European Jews, subjected to persecution for generations, have a right to emigrate elsewhere to seek a better life? Why would Palestine, the land where their ancestors had built a civilization that lasted 900 years, and where they had continued to live for 1,000 years thereafter, not be a natural haven for them? What moral right did the Arab populace have to exclude Jews from entering Palestine, or to harass and kill them as they did so? What sin did Zionism commit? In a world with a finite amount of land, should not those willing to work hard to maximize the productivity of that land to grow food and feed the populace not have a right to do so, rather than leaving it fallow? Even if the Balfour Declaration had never been issued, by what moral code did the Arabs have the right to exclude Jews from entering Palestine? Your summary indictment of the Israelis as oppressors of the Palestinians makes no mention of these prefatory events.

After WWI, the defeat of the Ottoman Turks, and the creation of the British mandate, tensions between Arabs and Jews began to intensify. Palestine was still not a country owned by the Arabs. No country named “Palestine” existed. This is not simply a legalistic technicality. It is a fact. With the conflict between the Arabs and the Jews intensifying, and the bloodshed increasing, and British soldiers being killed, Britain finally threw up its hands and said, “We’re leaving.” The newly formed UN, confronted with this bloody conflict between Arabs and Jews, passed a resolution to partition Palestine between them. Today, Al Jazeera criticizes the proposed partition as not being fair to the Arabs, as favoring the Jews. But that was not the objection the Arabs made at the time. Their objection was to the very existence of a Jewish state altogether. The Jews accepted the partition; the Arabs rejected the proposed partition, not claiming that it was inequitable, but vowing to prevent the creation of a Jewish state altogether, determined to drive the Jews into the sea.

And the Jews are accused of being unfair, being unreasonable, being prejudiced? You refer in your article to the Palestinian struggle as a struggle “for freedom and the right of political self-determination, for release from colonial rule and pervasive military and carceral violence.” How did the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine constitute “colonial rule”? Because the majority of the Jews who emigrated to Palestine from the concentration camps were European? How does that make their creation of a Jewish state “colonial”? Had the Palestinians accepted the proposed partition, rather than being committed to the destruction of the Jewish state, they would have had their freedom and their Palestinian state 75 years ago. Instead, their hatred of Jews – and there is no other word for it – condemned them to 75 years of continuous bloodshed. And you and others – progressive liberals, knowledgeable academics, supposedly fair-minded, moral people - blame the events which ensued on the Israelis. You question the right of the Israelis to have their own nation. Do you question the right of the French, the British, the Germans, the Italians, the Moroccans, the Egyptians, the Tunisians, the Saudis, the Venezuelans, the Bolivians, the Nigerians, the Somalians, …. to have their own country?

When I read and hear statements about the inalienable right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes in Palestine, many of whom fled their homes during the 1948 War for Independence at the instigation of the Arab forces, instilling fear of the Haganah and Irgun. I am struck by the historical amnesia of those making these declarations and accusing Israel of unspeakable intolerance and insensitivity, who fail to recall an even greater cataclysmic event that occurred just a year earlier, and which involved the largest mass migration of human beings in world history, which resulted in deaths far exceeding the deaths on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over the last 75 years. That event was the forced partition of India, resulting in the creation of the nation of Pakistan, a partition that was imposed upon India by the Moslem minority population, a population which was not indigenous to India, having invaded India multiple times, beginning in 1398 with Tamerlane, recurring in 1519 with Babur, establishing the Mughal Empire. Under its leader, Mohammed Jinnah, the Moslem minority demanded that, with the departure of the British, India be divided in order to accommodate the Moslems’ desire for a nation of their own in which they would be the majority, a division which Mahatma Gandhi opposed and advocated against, but which Jinnah insisted occur, or, as Jinnah put it, “We shall have India divided, or we shall have India destroyed.” [Freedom at Midnight, Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, 1975, p. 36.] The turmoil and hostilities caused by the forced migration of 10 to 12 million people – Hindus and Sikhs forced to move from the Punjab and Bengal into the reconfigured India, and Moslems from India into the Punjab and Bengal – and the armed conflicts and bloodshed that ensued resulted in the deaths of an estimated 2 million people ["https://www.quora.com/How-many-Hindu-Muslims-died-at-the-time-of-partition-in-1947" ], compared to the deaths of approximately 116,100 Jews/Israelis and Arabs/Palestinians over the span of the multiple Jewish-Israeli/Palestinian-Arab disputes and conflicts prior to 2023 people ["https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/total-casualties-arab-israeli-conflict" ] This crude comparison of fatalities is not intended to minimize the human tragedy of the loss of even one life to ethnic violence. Nonetheless, one never hears an outcry about the inalienable right of return of the millions of Hindus who were forcibly evicted from their homes in the Punjab and Bengal in order to appease the demand by a Moslem minority for a nation of their own, who, if they did not get their way, threatened the use of violence to destroy India itself. Israel never threatened to burn Palestine to the ground if it did not get its way in the creation of a Jewish state.

Since Israel’s success in its War for Independence, there have been two more wars in which the Arab states surrounding Israel invaded it, again bent on driving the Jews into the sea. But still, you claim that it is Israel which is the aggressor. You mention the Oslo accords, but you fail to mention the numerous efforts before and after the Oslo accords to reach a two-state peace settlement with the Palestinians, all of which were sabotaged by the Palestinians’ refusal to drop their demand for a right of return of all of the Palestinian refugees, which now includes not only the Palestinians who abandoned their homes in 1948 – at the urging of the Arab states – but includes their children and grandchildren as well, which would result in the disappearance of Israel as a Jewish state – the only Jewish state in a world in which there are 47 Arab/Muslim states. But one Jewish state is one too many.

You refer only to the Oslo accords, and imply, without stating, that somehow it was Israel which caused their ultimate failure. You fail to note that immediately after the accords were concluded, Hamas blew up a bus in Tel Aviv. You also neglect to mention the Camp David summit in 2020, in which Ehud Barak agreed to essentially everything the Palestinians were demanding, except the right of return. Yassir Arafat refused to agree to an end to hostilities if Barak’s proposal were accepted, and then refused to sign. A settlement agreement without a commitment to end hostilities is no settlement agreement. And still, it is Israel’s fault that the two-state solution has not been realized and it is the Israelis who are oppressing the Palestinians, who have repeatedly rejected the key to peace which would have liberated them form their so-called prison.

You deplore “the horrors that Palestinian people have lived through for decades in the form of bombings, arbitrary attacks, arrests and killings,” all of which you attribute to Israel. You do not mention that between September 1993 and September 2005, 1,715 Israelis were killed by Palestinian terrorists. Between September 2005 and August, 2023, another 344 Israelis were killed in terrorist attacks by Palestinians. Some examples: On August 30, 1999, Yehiel Finfeter, 25, and Sharon Steinmetz, 21, were murdered while hiking in the Megiddo region; on August 20, 1998, Rabbi Shlomo Ra’anan, 63, was stabbed to death in the bedroom of his home in Hebron; on July 26, 1996, Uri Munk, 53, and his daughter-in-law, Rachel Munk, 24, were killed in a drive-by shooting. Rachel’s husband was critically wounded and died the next day. On October 6, 2000, Bachor Jean, 54, was killed when rocks were thrown at his vehicle while he was traveling from Haifa to Rishon Lezion. The rocks shattered his windshield and struck him in the chest. He succumbed the next day. On October 7, 2001, Yair Mordechai, 43, of Kibbutz Shelhhot was killed when a Palestinian suicide bomber detonated a bomb strapped to his body near the entrance to the kibbutz; On December 20, 2002, Rabbi Yitzhak Arama, 40, was shot and killed while driving with his wife and six children to attend a pre-wedding celebration in Afula. The Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility; on November 10, 2002, Revital Ohayon, 34, her two sons, 5 and 4, Yitzhak Dori, 44, and Tirza Damari, 42, were killed when a terrorist infiltrated their kibbutz and opened fire. The Fatah Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade claimed responsibility for the attack. And the list goes on and on, year after year -27 Israelis killed in 2006; 13 Israelis killed in 2007; 34 Israelis killed in 2008; 6 Israelis killed in 2009; 8 Israelis killed in 2010; 20 Israelis killed in 2011; 7 Israelis killed in 2012; 7 Israelis killed in 2013; 42 Israelis killed in 2014; 36 Israelis killed in 2015; 33 Israelis killed in 2016; 15 Israelis killed in 2017; 13 Israelis killed in 2018; 11 Israelis killed in 2019; 3 Israelis killed in 2020; 17 Israelis killed in 2021; 24 Israelis killed in 2022; and 28 Israelis killed in 2023, prior to the massacre on October 7. Israel is accused of administering an apartheid regime because it erected a wall on the Green Line to protect Israelis from Palestinian terrorist attacks; you accuse Israel of arbitrarily oppressing the Palestinians, who have turned down every reasonable effort by Israel to make peace.

You state, “How can we even imagine a future equality of the living without knowing, as the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has documented, that Israeli forces and settlers had killed nearly 3,800 Palestinian civilians since 2008 in the West Bank and Gaza even before the current actions began. Where is the world’s mourning for them?” Where is the world’s mourning for the over 2,000 Israelis killed by “civilian” Palestinian terrorists since 1993? Why don’t you deplore the Palestinian’s refusal to accept the partition plan in 1948, which would have prevented all of this bloodshed; its refusal to accept Ehud Barak’s peace offer in 2000; Hamas’s commitment in its Charter to annihilate the State of Israel and exterminate the Jews?

You close with the statement, “The world I want is one that would oppose the normalization of colonial rule and support Palestinian self-determination and freedom, a world that would, in fact, realise the deepest desires of all the inhabitants of those lands to live together in freedom, non-violence, equality and justice.” Like the freedom, non-violence, equality and justice which are enjoyed in Iran, Syria, Iraq, Egypt and Saudia Arabia, where homosexuals are routinely persecuted and jailed; where women who fail to cover their hair with a hijab are imprisoned, tortured, and raped; where protesters against their despotic governments are arrested and thrown in prison for years? Palestinians living within Israel, in which five Palestinians sit on the Knesset, enjoy more freedom, equality and justice than any of their Moslem brethren in Iran, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, or Afghanistan, yet you claim it is the Israelis who are oppressing them.

You end rhapsodically with a utopian dream, “we need our poets and our dreamers, the untamed fools, the kind who know how to organize.” Yes, read poetry to Hamas. That should work. You might want to start with Dover Beach, “[T]he world which seems to lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.” This is the world that Hamas and the Palestinians created, not Israel.

Yours truly,

Marc Susselman Attorney at Law

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MS said:

Suppose your home is broken into and the intruder brutally kills a member of your family, then leaves. The police have identified the murderer and know where he is located. He has taken refuge in the home where his family lives, and is holding up there. The family members do not wish to protect him, but they are being held hostage by their miscreant son, brother. The police ask you, “What do you want us to do?’ You say, “I want you to apprehend this murderer.” The police say, well that will not be easy. He is holding up in a house occupied by other people, and he is armed. If we storm the house, there is a risk that innocent people will die. We cannot tell you what the likelihood of that risk is. Do you want us to just let him go. You say, “Well, I do not want innocent people to die, but I also cannot accept this murderer going free. Is there any other option besides storming the house?” The police say, “Yes. We can wait him out. Eventually he will have to come out to get food. We can try smoking him out, but that could also harm innocent people.” You say, “Well, I prefer that you wait him out, and hopefully he will eventually emerge and you can either apprehend him, or kill him.” But what if that does not work, what do you want the police to do? Leave and let the murderer go free, or storm the house, knowing there is a likelihood that some of the innocent occupants will be injured or killed. What do you want the police to do?

This is the predicament that the Israelis find themselves in. But they do not have the option of waiting until Hamas supporters try to leave Gaza. They won’t. So what is Israel to do? Let the Hamas murderers go free, or storm Gaza and try to keep the casualties of innocent Palestinians to a minimum, knowing that the death of some untold number of Palestinians will inevitably die. All the liberals, the good-hearted, moral people say, “We want a ceasefire.” But that will guarantee that the Hamas murderers are never apprehended or called to account. What would you want the IDF to do if your wife had been raped and killed; your infant son beheaded?

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MS said:

P.S.:

The police tell you, “We have been negotiating with the murderer, but he tells us that his murdering your wife and beheading your son were justified, because you compelled him to do it, because 5 years ago you were his landlord, and when he was unable to pay the rent, you evicted him, and he has been living in poverty ever since. He blames you for that, and the death of your wife and son are on your head.” Or, the police say, “He claims he used to own a very nice house, and you moved next door, but he did not like you. So he physically attacked you one day. You responded by contacting the police, and he was forced out of the house he owned. His life went downhill after that. You compelled him to retaliate by murdering your wife and son.”

Would you buy that?

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MS said:

Pillette suggests that Netanyahu and the Israelis deliberately left the Gaza border unguarded so that the Hamas terrorists could break into Israel and kill and butcher Israelis, so that Israel would have an excuse to invade Gaza and destroy Hamas.

What a sick fuck! And you guys say nothing to denounce him!

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MS said:

J. Mulvaney, Ph.D.’s, “first reaction [to] the Hamas terrorist attack was that Bibis nuts are in the fire.” Not, what a reprehensible act of barbaric inhumane cruelty.

Another liberal asshole.

“One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.” George Orwell

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The End.