‘Gut-wrenching decisions’

‘Gut-wrenching decisions’

Henry Ostberg’s July 17 letter “A responsibility to the diaspora” was very painful to read. He displays amnesia about the gut-wrenching decisions that Israel made in expelling 8,700 Jews from Gaza in 2005. All Israel got in return was a terrorist state in its backyard, and daily barrages of rockets into civilian neighborhoods. Where was public opinion around the world when this took place?

Can any right-minded person really believe that Jews living in suburban communities are an obstacle to peace? In 1948 when biblical Israel was divided, the Arabs received almost 70 percent of the area to establish a state. They were to call it the Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine. Their leaders decided to call it the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan so that in the future they could lay claim for a Palestinian state. Jordan is Palestine.

Israel has a responsibility to protect its citizens from any harm. Constant threats of annihilation, terrorists, and wars in the past 60 years should teach us about our enemies. There used to be glorious Jewish communities in Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, the Sudan, Yemen, et al. They no longer exist. Were they also an obstacle to peace? How about the Holocaust in Europe? Were the Jewish communities there also an obstacle to peace?

How far should I go back? Remember the slavery in Egypt or the Spanish Inquisition, the pogroms and Anatevka? How about the massacre of the Jewish community of Hebron in 1929-30? Public opinion be damned. The Arabs want nothing more than to make the Middle East Judenrein. Do you really think that they even want another Arab state? There are already 22 of them. There is only one tiny little Jewish nation, baruch haShem.

Yassir Arafat was offered the biggest olive branch and he thumbed his nose at it and started another intifada. When a door to a tunnel in Jerusalem was opened as a rear exit, for safety concerns, the Arabs started another campaign of terror.

For the sake of the Jewish people all over the world we can’t afford to make the same mistakes again. We paid our dues to the world and gave enough. Dayeinu.

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