Letter: Some ‘facts’ about Israel

Some ‘facts’ about Israel

In response to Cathleen Krahe’s letter of Sept. 2 (“Israel wants it all), there are a number of facts which should be mentioned.

1. The Jewish homeland was established in 1948, not in the late 1800s, and was done by the United Nations, which wanted to establish a Jewish state and a Palestinian state. This was rejected by the Arabs and accepted by the Jews.

2. Seven-hundred-thousand Arabs fled or were expelled from what was to be the Jewish state only after Egypt, Syria and Jordan went to war against the new state in 1948. In the three years following the war, 700,000 Jews were expelled or fled from Arab countries. Today there are almost 5 million Arab refugees (descendents of the original group), many of whom are refugees only because for the most part they are denied citizenship by their fellow Arabs in adjoining states. There are zero Jewish refugees.

3. Israel has repeatedly offered to negotiate for a two-state solution. Hamas, as part of the Palestinian government, in its charter calls for “the eventual creation of an Islamic state in Palestine, in place of Israel.”

4. Col. Richard Kemp CBE, a former commander of British Forces in Afghanistan and one of the most highly decorated and respected officers in the British Army, has spent 30 years of his career fighting terrorism in the UK and around the world and was quoted as saying “during Operation Cast Lead (the latest Gaza war) the Israeli Defense Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in the combat zones than any other army in the history of warfare.”

As Ms. Krahe says, “Facts are facts”.

Buster Feldman

Aspen