(Op-ed, Aug. 14)
Sen. Chris Van Hollen’s op-ed calls for accountability when Americans are harmed abroad. That principle is correct and essential. But the senator’s focus on alleged Israeli misconduct in the West Bank leaves out the full reality: Israel is under constant attack from Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other Iran-backed groups whose stated goal is the destruction of the Jewish state. These groups target civilians, Israeli and American alike, with shootings, stabbings, rocket fire and other acts of terror. Any discussion of violence in the region must begin with this truth.
Violence by individual Israelis against Palestinians is wrong and must be prosecuted. But when Americans are murdered by Palestinian terrorists, or when Israeli families are slaughtered in their homes, justice demands the same urgency. One-sided outrage undermines the principle that accountability must be even-handed.
That imbalance is why the attempts by Sen. Van Hollen and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to ban vital weapons sales to the Jewish state as it fights to protect its families from Iran and its terrorist proxies are so dangerous. Several times in less than a year, the overwhelming bipartisan majority of the U.S. Senate has repeatedly rebuffed these efforts to undermine Israel’s security. Such measures would punish our closest democratic ally in the Middle East while rewarding those who seek its annihilation.
The surest way to prevent tragedies is not to weaken the U.S.-Israel bond but to defeat the terrorism that drives the violence in the first place.
-William C. Daroff
The writer is chief executive officer of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.
Good article which leaves out an important fact, important to Americans in general and Jews specifically. The Democratic party’s leadership and now a majority of it’s politicians have moved into the pro-Hamas camp. A majority of Democrats voted to stop the sale of arms to Israel in the middle of the Jewish country’s attempt to wipe out the terrorist Gaza government, which promised to repeat it’s Oct. 7th atrocities again and again.
The party which would do this, by effectively supporting the barbaric murder of innocent civilians, has sunk to an unbelievable depth of depravity.
I’m a Republican but it’s sad to see the moral destruction of a once viable and strong Democratic party. Democracy needs two strong party’s to keep each other moderate and focused on improving the lives of it’s citizens.
Until the Democrats drastically change course, that no longer exists.