Support for peace, not rejection

To the Editor:

Amidst her scorching screed against Israel, Shelly Altman does get one thing right: the vicious ongoing infighting between the Palestinian Authority/Fatah and Hamas, with ordinary Palestinians the intended collateral damage.

P.A. refusal to pay for Israelsupplied electricity has directly led to those frequent blackouts. Remarkably enough, though both are clearly actors in that bitter struggle, when it comes to interaction with Israel, Altman denies either, any moral agency whatsoever.

The wars of 2009, 2012 and 2014 were started by Hamas firing thousands of rockets towars near border Israeli civilian communities. During those wars, Hamas used mosques, hospitals, schools, even private homes, as weapons depots, while firing off missiles from their vicinity. It cynically used Gazans as civilian shields against counterattack, and, if nonetheless attacked, propagandistically milked ensuing deaths, injuries and physical destruction. In contrast to Altman's cited discredited HRW charges, those really were monstrous war crimes.

Hamas has been feverishly diverting cement intended for Gaza reconstruction toward the rebuilding of its underground commandand-control network, but with particular emphasis on digging tunnels snaking under the border toward Israeli communities.

Israeli and Egyptian external controls over Gaza egress and ingress are solely intended to impede constant weapons smuggling, whether by sea or land. Egypt has particular concerns about Hamas support of ISIS, which it is barely managing to suppress in Sinai.

Only in comparison with Hamas could the P.A. look good. Rather than acting as "Israel's proxy", security cooperation with Israel is a matter of self-preservation against an always threatening West Bank Hamas takeover.

At the recent UN heads of state gathering, P.A. President for life Mahmoud Abbas praised those "martyrs and courageous prisoners" while excoriating Israel, and even denouncing the now century-old Balfour Declaration as a "crime against our people." Hardly the words of a peace seeker. By contrast, Egyptian President al-Sisi called on the Palestinians to "accept coexistence" with the Jewish state.

Shouldn't Jewish Voice for Peace be supporting those who seek peace, rather than those who reject it?