Airbnb imbroglio

No surprises in the vitriolic content in the letter from your reader in O’Connor, Australia (November 26). Sadly, she identifies herself as Jewish, but feels no compunction in promoting the discrimination of fellow Jews.

As she is misinformed, allow me to disabuse her of her ignorance in matters concerning discrimination of persons when based on consideration of religious, ethnic or national origin as promulgated under American law. Legal actions have been put in motion against Airbnb by both the Lawfare Project and Honest Reporting with potential civil and criminal consequences.

Rather than flaunt her shameful behavior, your reader ought to internalize the message of the 19th prayer that our sages added to the weekday amida. JOEL KUTNER

Jerusalem

Is the Airbnb decision to remove “West Bank” apartments from their listings, antisemitic, anti-Israeli or just plain anti-occupation? Are Jews being selected/ discriminated against or is the whole affair just a “tempest in a teapot” making a “mountain out of a molehill?”

An interesting question that might help us to decide is how Airbnb would react to an Israeli Arab who wants to put an apartment he happens to own (in the “occupied” West Bank) on the Airbnb listings... YIGAL HOROWITZ Beersheba

In “Airbnb – A case of overreaction” (November 26) Susan Hattis Rolef notes that the status of Judea and Samaria “has not been settled under international law” and that the Geneva Convention limits “what Israel may do unilaterally to change their status…”

Rolef is in error on several levels. The applicable Convention is the Geneva Convention of 1949, Part IV. The pertinent Sections are Articles 47-78, “Occupied territories.” A review of these Articles, as well as a review of the commentary by Jean S. Pictet, the then-director-general of General Affairs of the International Committee of the Red Cross, conclusively shows that the term “occupied territories” refers only to a situation where the territories constituted a prior legitimate power and sovereign – not an amorphous entity and situation where there was no clear title to the land in question. The signs of a prior legitimate power and sovereign would be an established government and governmental institutions. This was not the case with Judea and Samaria. Rather, this area was contested after the cessation of the British mandate.

Moreover, the armistice between Israel and Jordan clearly stated that the status of these areas were to be decided subsequently.

As such, the Geneva Convention of 1949 does not apply to Judea and Samaria. Page 273 of the Commentary is particularly cogent. It reports that the Hague Convention of 1907 stated the traditional concept whereby the authority of the legitimate power