Letter to the Editor: Toby F. Block

Letter to the editor,

I agree. The lives of Palestinians in Gaza should not be put under threat. This means that:

Hamas should stop putting its command centers in hospitals and storing munitions near hospitals.

Hamas should stop stealing humanitarian supplies provided for the people by Israel or other countries.

Hamas and other terrorist groups should stop committing double war crimes by firing missiles at Israeli population centers from Gazan population centers.

Hamas should stop urging young children to seek martyrdom by killing Jews. It should also stop running Summer Camps where teenagers are given weapons and taught to use them.

Hamas should stop storing missiles under UNRWA schools.

UNRWA should stop teaching Palestinian children to hate Jews. In fact, it’s time for Arab countries to correct their great sin against the Palestinians – condemning the descendants of those who fled Arab-initiated violence against the Jews in the 1940’s to perennial refugee limbo, saying the Palestine refugees would remain under UNRWA aegis until Israel could be forced to take them in. (The Arab assumption was that Israel, as a democracy, would have to grant citizenship to the “refugees” who could then vote to remove every vestige of Jewish law and culture from Israel’s law books). A full 99.5% of today’s 6,000,000 Palestine refugees were born in UNRWA camps. In contrast, renascent Israel long ago absorbed and uplifted Mizrachi Jews driven from their homes in the Muslim countries of the Middle East and North Africa. Their descendants comprise the majority of Israel’s current Jewish population.

The world should be urging Hamas to lay down its arms and release all remaining hostages.

The US, EU, and Arab countries in the Abraham Accords should begin the process of demilitarizing Gaza and deradicalizing the Palestinians, who should be made to realize that it will take time for them to finally achieve real Statehood, in a Palestinian state that will be Israel’s neighbor, not her replacement.

Toby F. Block, Atlanta