Pieces on a chessboard
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s admonition, combined with other administration policies, is both offensive and dangerous (“Blinken to Israel: ‘Oct. 7 not a license to dehumanize others,’” February 9). His implication that Israel might be guilty of dehumanizing Palestinians suggests a moral equivalence between the IDF, called by international military experts the most moral army in the world, and the Hamas butchers. Taken together with President Biden’s opinion that Israel’s response in Gaza to the barbaric attack on Israeli civilians is “over the top,” this is an attempt to force Israel into accepting a premature ceasefire that would enable and embolden Hamas to commit similar atrocities in the future. Blinken also reiterated his call for a two-state solution, promising Israel “the necessary security assurances.” This would reward the Palestinians for Hamas’s unpardonable savagery. Hezbollah’s incessant attacks from areas that the UN guaranteed would be demilitarized are compelling evidence of the unreliability of such assurances.
The US expressly opposes any Israeli action in Rafah – Hamas’s one remaining stronghold. This is an offer of safe haven for Hamas where they could reassert control over the Gazan population, establish a stranglehold on incoming civilian aid, and rearm with smuggled weapons in preparation for their next genocidal attack.
While we appreciate America’s support until now, it appears that the bill is coming due. We cannot be a vassal state bending to our lord’s whims. (Recall Menachem Begin’s lionhearted declaration, “I am not a Jew with trembling knees.”)
We are not compliant children taught morality by parents who provide rewards to entice good behavior. We are not pieces on a chessboard in which players who criticize our soldiers for fighting too hard to defend our very existence are themselves afraid to confront directly the world’s leading supporter of terror – Iran.
We dare not accept conditions that could lead to the demise of the nation state of the Jewish people. EFRAIM COHEN Zichron Ya’acov