Letters to the Editor: What Dr. King and Gandhi would say about Hamas
To the editor: To those who cheered Hamas’ murder of noncombatants, ponder this. (“What the U.S. is telling Israel about a Gaza ground invasion — and what Israel is hearing,” Oct. 31)
What did the Black Panthers really achieve with their pick-up-the-gun rhetoric, as opposed to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolent, non-cooperation mass movement that brought foundational change to America?
King’s movement always held the moral, political and public opinion high ground. He always eschewed violence, no matter how many centuries of violence were inflicted on African Americans.
How much did the Indian terrorists really gain against the British in India (who wreaked three centuries of violence and colonial rule on India), compared with what Mahatma Gandhi’s massive, coordinated, nonviolent, non-cooperation movement achieved?
In his brilliant book “The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine,” Columbia University historian Rashid Khlaidi points out that Israeli generals admitted that the largely nonviolent, non-cooperation, well-coordinated demonstrations of the first Palestinian intifada in the 1990s were effective. This was because Israeli forces knew how to easily smash violent groups, so they were clueless when confronted with the intifada.
This was the one time that the Palestinians backed the Israeli militarists down and actually made major gains diplomatically. They won the support and sympathy of world public opinion.
Hamas’ way is not — I repeat, not — the way to make gains, and events since Oct. 7 have proved that. Dr. King’s and Gandhi’s examples of the right way to bring positive social change dramatically underscore that.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson, Los Angeles
..
To the editor: Sitting comfortably in California, my mind is consumed with empathy for my fellow humans experiencing twin terrors in faraway Mediterranean lands.
In Israel, families are grieving or waiting agitatedly for news of hostages taken by Hamas. In the Gaza Strip, Palestinian families are cowering from explosions and shrapnel, lining up for water as they mourn their dead.
Listening to the retrogressive call by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for a “holy war” against the Biblical foe “Amalek,” I grieve for the life of the brilliant and forward-thinking Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, a statesman who recognized that Israel will never be secure until the land of Palestine constitutes two secure nations divided by legal borders.
That Rabin was assassinated in 1995 by someone who supported Netanyahu for prime minister the following year adds poignancy, urgency and sad irony to this most recent murderous round of Mideast strife.
Eileen White Read, Santa Barbara
..
To the editor: A photo you published of the Oct. 28 march in downtown Los Angeles features a sign that states, “Unity in confronting Zionism.” Zionism is the creation of the state of Israel.
Protesters shouted, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” For Palestine to extend from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, Israel would have to disappear.
These protesters are not decrying the loss of innocent lives or issuing a call for justice. They are aligning themselves with the goal of Hamas: the destruction of Israel.
This is why, regardless of my support for the peace movement, I can find no common cause with these protests.
Paula Goldman, Santa Monica
