Ours don’t matter

I was struck by the utter inconsistency in the arguments of the “Black Lives Matter” group in its foray into Israeli-Palestinian politics (“Making Palestinians ‘matter,’” Frontlines, August 5).

It is described as a “female-led social justice movement aimed at putting an end to police brutality and enforcing protection for the LGBT community.”

Do its members not realize that women and LGBT people have full human rights in Israel, while they have no human rights throughout the Arab and Muslim world, including so-called Palestine? Do they not realize that Palestinian homosexuals escape to Israel to save their lives?

And what about the treatment of women? Do they not realize that women in Palestinian society and throughout the Muslim Middle East, where Shari’a law is often practiced, are considered chattel? In Saudi Arabia, women are not allowed to drive and cannot go out without a male relative; wives can be divorced on a whim, and they have no legal protection. Also, female genital mutilation is endemic in some Muslim societies.

They claim to be for human rights, but fail to see that there are none in the Palestinian areas where both Hamas (in Gaza) and Fatah (in the West Bank) murder each other’s adherents without due process and without mercy. This is real “police brutality.” By comparison, Israel is a haven of human rights and independent courts.

Their views are so far from reality that they are blinded by their politically correct bias, which apparently concludes that Israeli lives don’t matter.

JACK S. COHEN

Netanya