Who are terrorists?

The land which would become Israel was for centuries part of the Turkish-ruled Ottoman Empire. After World War I Britain was entrusted with establishing in Palestine “a national home for the Jewish people,” so long as doing so did not prejudice the civil and religious rights of non-Jewish communities there. Under the British Mandate (1920–1948), the whole region was known as Palestine.

The rise of Palestinian Arab nationalism coupled with the rapid growth of Palestine’s smaller Jewish population saw an escalation in Arab-Jewish violence in Palestine. Britain handed the problem to the United Nations, which in 1947 proposed partitioning Palestine into two states—one Jewish, one Arab—with the Jerusalem-Bethlehem area to become an international city. The plan deprived the Palestinian state of key agricultural lands and seaports, which led the Palestinian Arabs to reject the proposal. The population in Palestine in 1947 was 33.3 percent Jewish and 66.7 percent Arab. Despite the fact that Arabs outnumbered the Jewish by 2 to 1, the Jews were awarded 55.5 percent of the land and the Palestinians 44.5 percent.

Since the 1947 partitioning, Israel has employed various measures to cut off Arab villagers from their land and hand it over to Israeli settlers. This led to Hamas being established in 1987 following an Arab uprising against the Israeli occupation of Gaza, West Bank and Jerusalem. Since 1947 the UN has passed hundreds of resolutions condemning the treatment of Arabs by the Israelis, but the U.S. has traditionally vetoed any action against Israel. Our inaction helped create the Hamas terrorist group.

UN data from Jan. 1, 2008, to Oct. 6, 2023, shows 6,542 Arabs, including 1,475 children and 627 women, were killed. During this same period 309 Israelis, including 25 children and six women, were killed. Who are the real terrorists?

KENNETH WEBER Hot Springs Village