Call it the ‘Netanyahu incident’
As a Jewish American and an Israeli, I challenge Charles Krauthammer’s minimizing of the U.S. reaction to the “Biden incident” [“U.S. reaction to Biden incident was overreaction,” Opinion, March 22]. For starters, we might want to call it the “Netanyahu incident.”
For most of the world, east Jerusalem is occupied territory, just like the West Bank, and all settlements over the Green Line are illegal. It is absurd to see as confidence-building the ongoing confiscation of Palestinian land as state land and its subsequent construction for Jewish settlement.
Even a conservative nationalist like Ari Shavit wrote recently in the Israeli Ha’aretz newspaper that “if a sane Israel does not wake up, it will be defeated by the metastasizing of the occupation and the lack of the central government’s ability to stop it.”
It is time to set aside the tired and useless mantras heard by Krauthammer and members of AIPAC that “the Israelis have done everything for peace while the Palestinians have done nothing.” I am reminded of the (Hebrew) anti-road-rage bumper sticker one sees on cars in Israeli: “Don’t be right, be smart.”
— Simcha Shtull, Seattle