‘A mouthpiece for maleficence’

To the Editor:

Shelly Altman’s cognitive dissonance was on full disclosure in her letter of Sept. 23, 2017.

In describing the hell that is Gaza, the chairperson of the perversely named Jewish Voice for Peace conjured up James Baldwin’s quote, “Not everything that is faced can be changed but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” A far more appropriate reference would have been Einstein’s definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. In 2005, Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza – despite the absence of any suggestion the Palestinians would forswear efforts to eliminate Israel – leaving a fertile territory behind.

The result is that hundreds of millions of dollars in international aid has been transduced by Hamas, the governing body in Gaza, into tens of thousands of rockets fired at, and terror tunnels dug into, Israel. However, Ms. Altman would have Israel continually turn a blind eye to this aggression. As if possessing the unilateral neglect of patients with parietal lobe brain lesions, she exclusively offers up the exhortations of Human Rights Watch – an organization delegitimized by it singular obsession with demonizing Israel – but fails to mention Amnesty International’s unequivocal condemnation of Hamas’ actions as “war crimes” against both the citizens of Gaza and Israel. Far from a voice for peace, Ms. Altman is a mouthpiece for maleficence.