Stop targeting Israel

Re: Forum article by Shelly Altman, “A lesson on justice and its indivisibility.”

I find it perplexing that the Jewish Voice for Peace organization would equate Martin Luther King with Angela Davis. Martin Luther King advocated nonviolence. Angela Davis was involved with the Black Panther Party movement that killed a judge and three other innocent people. Ms. Davis, at one time an avowed Communist, was found not guilty, but there remains a dark cloud of doubt of her guilt that will hover over her reputation forever.

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions program against Israel appears to me the singular agenda the Jewish Voice for Peace is engaged in. They will only cause more dissension among Americans from both the left and right point of view when dealing with the Palestinian people concerning their desire for a two-state solution. Why just BDS against Israel? Saudi Arabia kills an American newsman, no BDS against the Saudis. The president of the Philippines openly brags about personally shooting and killing suspected drug dealers without a trial, no BDS against him or his country. Charles Krauthammer, the late editorialist, once wrote an essay asking if Israel were to disappear, would “the Arabs stop killing one another?” Even the late Amos Oz, the renowned Israeli novelist who for years was sympathetic to the Palestinian desire for their own land, wrote “why Palestinians could not see that Israel is to the Jews of the world their life raft.”

BDS promoters say they are not antiSemitic, I have my doubts. Martin Luther King once said that “Anti-Zionism is antiSemitic.” A two-state solution appears to be the only answer for peace. Turning the

West Bank into ‘Brigadoon’ will only happen when Palestinian terrorists, along with their Arab neighbors some hostile to Israel are all willing to sign a binding peace agreement. Those that support Israel may have at times shown their disdain against BDS supporters, and overlooked the First Amendment that protects free speech. Nobody is perfect. Marvin Cohen Hamden