RICHARD SHERMAN
people.
Margate, Florida
Regarding “Our longstanding position is West Bank is occupied, US administration clarifies” (April 2), the memory of the lies of Breckinridge Long and his State Department subordinates in the 1930s and 1940s is obviously still honored by their successors in that part of the US administration – especially by those living in the “occupied territories” of the United States of America, which includes most, if not all, of its component states.
LESLIE PORTNOY Netanya
Regarding “Our longstanding position is West Bank is occupied, US administration clarifies” (April 2), why has the Biden administration reversed policy toward the PA? Is it just to differentiate itself from former president Donald Trump or do they have a goal?
Who are the “Palestinian” people? Until 1964, the people called Palestinians were Jews. Christians, Muslims and others living in the British Mandate for Palestine identified with their clans and with the regions from which they migrated. Many just considered themselves to be Arabs.
In 1956, when America pulled out of the Aswan Dam project, Russia stepped in to fill the gap. In 1964 the KGB created the Palestine Liberation Organization. Its mission was to drive the “infidels” out of the Middle East. Its charter called for killing every Jew in Israel. Its modus operandi was terrorism. The KGB selected Yasser Arafat, an Egyptian soldier, training in Russia, to lead the PLO. He became the first Arab to call himself a Palestinian. It was only after the Arabs’ humiliating defeat in the 1967 Six-Day War that the term “Palestinian” came into common usage.
Why is America restoring Palestinian funding? Money is fungible. Designating money for COVID frees up other money to fund pay-to-slay, for example. Trump cut funding to the intransigent PLO and fostered the Abraham Accords, a major development for Mideast normalization. The Peace to Prosperity plan laid out a map giving the PA more land than Egypt and Jordan had controlled and giving Israel border security.
The Obama/Biden suggestion of a two-state solution based on the 1949 armistice lines is a giant step backward of more than 70 years that will merely kick the can down the road, taking the US out of the game. China has proposed hosting Palestinian-Israeli bilateral peace talks. How does that serve America’s interests? LEN BENNETT, AUTHOR OF UNFINISHED WORK
Ottawa, On.
US President Joe Biden, who misses no opportunity to express alarm at the “ugly poisons” of “systemic racism and white supremacy” (his words) that plague his America, feels that his US has the moral authority to dictate where indigenous Jews can and cannot live in their ancestral homeland?
Joe – look in a mirror. Think clearly. What you are advocating is ugly, poisonous and racist.
Say what you want while you can, but I’ll still be living rightfully here in my hometown (“settlement” to you) long after you have left the White House. EPHRAIM MARTIN Ma’aleh Adumim