Letters to the Editor: Israel expanded settlements and undermined peace before Hamas attacked

To the editor: I lived in Israel and Palestine in 1973 and realized how biased the Western press was against the Palestinians. The bias continues today. ("Is Israel committing genocide? Most of these readers emphatically say no," letters, Nov. 25)

The Hamas killings on Oct. 7 did not happen in a vacuum. Religious extremists are ascendant in the Israeli government.

In 1993, the Palestinians and Israelis recognized their national aspirations in the Oslo peace accords and agreed to the creation of Palestine based on the 1967 borders. The 2017 Hamas charter accepted a state based on the 1967 borders.

In his first run for prime minister in 1996, Benjamin Netanyahu campaigned against the accords after an Israeli extremist assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995.

Since then, the Israeli government has more than doubled the population of settlers. It has confiscated Palestinian land and imposed segregation in violation of international law that an occupying power cannot transfer parts of its own population into territory it occupies.

Support for Palestinian rights does not mean the eradication of Israel. Razing the Gaza Strip in pursuit of Hamas will never bring about the peaceful coexistence that millions of Palestinians and Israelis desire.

Keith Ensminger, Merced

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To the editor: You recently published a letter attacking Reps. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank) and Katie Porter (D-Irvine), both Senate candidates, for cowardice in not taking a forceful stance at the California Democratic Party convention on the deaths of Palestinians in Gaza.

Schiff and Porter are running to represent all people in California. How could anyone call them cowards when the war was and is so fluid and unpredictable?

Schiff and Porter have acted responsibly in the middle of a very disturbing and painful conflict. Just because people don't agree with them does not make them wrong or cowards.

Maybe it's too soon to be definite on anything going on in this war. And, maybe both Schiff and Porter are knowledgeable of talks going within the administration and want to keep their lips sealed until the president and his team can do their work.

Larry Margo, Valley Village

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.