Readers React: If Palestinians don’t offer a plan for peace, what’s Israel to do?

To the editor: Follow not what people say, but what they do. Rebecca Vilkomerson’s group Jewish Voice for Peace ignores the defining actions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. (“Discriminatory policies risk Israel’s longtime bipartisan U.S. support,” Opinion, Dec. 16)

Palestinians rejected the state handed to them in 1947. Had they simply built a country, as Israel did, history would not know of this conflict.

With President Clinton, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered peace to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in 2000. Clinton lamented: “They [Arab leaders] were all impressed with Israel’s acceptance and told me they believed Arafat should take the deal.” He called Arafat’s rejection of the deal a “colossal mistake.”

In 2008, Israel offered further concessions. Palestinians have yet to offer a peace proposal. They have launched countless terror and missile attacks and voted for a government whose founding covenant states, “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it.”

Vilkomerson should tell us: To whom should Israelis appeal for peace? They are literally dying to know.

Barry Forman, Irvine

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To the editor: As an Israeli citizen deeply concerned with the country’s brutal occupation of Palestinian territory, I support everything that Vilkomerson wrote in her op-ed article.

I have traveled throughout Israel and Palestine, listening to the many voices on all sides of this conflict and witnessing the human cost of Israel’s repressive policies. People in the U.S. must wake up to see what their tax dollars are supporting. Thank heavens some of our legislators are beginning to show the courage to tell the truth.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acts as if he has the U.S. wrapped around his finger. Please prove him wrong.

Yael Petretti, Easthampton, Mass.

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To the editor: It’s easy to bash another country such as Israel, but it’s far more difficult to find a solution to the conflict between the Jews in Israel and the Palestinians.

The group Jewish Voice for Peace evidently thinks that the Jewish state would roll over based on ambiguous polls taken in the United States. No nation rolls over and commits suicide based on opinion polls, particularly Israel, which has fought its enemies from within and abroad over a 5,776-year span.

Of course Israel isn’t perfect, but in the Middle East, which country is more democratic? Israel will continue to thrive, and groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace will be relegated to a footnote in history.

Dick Bernstein, Los Angeles

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To the editor: I am one of those Democrats who would like to be able to support Israel, but I must oppose the current policies of the Netanyahu government and the occupation of Palestinian territories.

The best way for the U.S. to support a just peace is by withholding our military and financial support of Israel.

The sooner we refuse effectively to condone the theft of land, the destruction of houses, the killing of Palestinians in their own areas and the denial of basic human rights, the sooner peace can be effected. Peace will surely benefit both Israelis and Palestinians, in addition to the whole Middle East and the rest of the world.

Mary Allen, Philadelphia

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