Letter: Israel wants it all

Blaming the victim and considering Israel the victim of biased media coverage seems the main theme of Aryeh Green’s column (“Subtlety Lost (With my apologies to John Milton),” Commentary, Aug. 28, The Aspen Times).

The Israel-Palestine conflict comes down to the desires of two people for the same land and water. On the one side you have the indigenous Palestinians and the other the Israeli Jews. Feeling a need for a state with a majority of Jews due to anti-Semitism, European Jews in the late 1800s chose to make a Jewish state in an Arab area called Palestine. They chose this place because of the Biblical references. Since 1947, Jews have been displacing Palestinians, since 1967 militarily occupying them in the West Bank and since 2007 caging them in the Gaza Strip because the Palestinians elected Hamas to the displeasure of Israel and the U.S.

Ever wonder why over 4.9 million registered Palestinian refugees are living in U.N.-operated refugee camps (in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank)? Well, Israel ran them off their land.

I am saddened by the Israeli deaths, six civilians and 64 soldiers, but there is no comparison to the Palestinian deaths — 2,139 Palestinians, mostly civilians, including over 490 children — around 11,000 injured, of that 3,000 children (possibly a third paralyzed for life) and about 1,800 orphaned. The scenes of destruction of homes, infrastructure, schools, hospitals, etc., from Israeli bombings are horrifying. That other military actions were worse is not a justification.

Israel wants all the land from the Jordan Valley to the Mediterranean for its Jewish-majority country. Palestinians have said they would be satisfied with a state along the 1967 border in the West Bank and free movement in Gaza, but Israel wants it all. That is why Israel continues to build Jewish-only Settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and moved over 500,000 Jews into them.

The facts are the facts; crying victim and unfair reporting is not going to change them.

Cathleen Krahe

Aspen