Support a secular, democratic Palestine | Letter to the editor

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“Hamas made us bomb them!” is the totality of the argument of the pro-Zionist letter writers this past week. 

Hamas is a reactionary organization, nurtured by Israel on its founding in the ’80s as a counter to the then more radical PLO, steeped in religious obscurantism like the fascist leadership in Israel and the Trumpists here. Hamas offers no way forward for Palestinians.

Zionists have framed this latest battle as starting with Hamas firing rockets from Gaza. 

This is a LIE! 

It ignores Zionist ethnic cleansing of East Jerusalem, most recently attempting to expel Palestinians from their homes and replacing them with Jews. 

When Palestinians fought back, Israel attacked the holy Al Aqsa mosque with tear gas and rubber bullets. Then, Hamas fired rockets.

The battles aren’t between Israel and Hamas, but between Israel and the whole of the Palestinian people, as demonstrated by the massive uprisings, including a general strike, in the Occupied West Bank and even among the
2 million Palestinians within Israel proper, all living under conditions of apartheid (Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem, various UN agencies). Israel directs settler-colonial violence against an oppressed people who have a right, even a duty, to rebel against it.

Maps change all the time. Israel has no more a “right to exist” (especially as a “Jewish state”) than did the Soviet Union or Yugoslavia or Tanganyika. 

All those who genuinely want peace must support a single, secular, democratic state for all the people who live in Palestine.

Mike Schiller
PORT TOWNSEND