My Take: Oversimplifying Gaza conflict misses the mark

In response to community columnist Ray Buursma on Nov. 19:

Dear Mr. Buursma,

Reducing the Israeli-Hamas conflict to a metaphor of a poor child bullied in a schoolyard is a gross over-simplification of the origins of the current war, which disregards many relevant facts.

You disregard the fact that more money has been donated to the Palestinian cause per capita than any other humanitarian cause in the history of mankind. If you compare the over-$30 billion of aid the Palestinian Authority has received by the international community (including the U.S.) since the signing of the Oslo Accords, to the money received by Europe after World War II under the Marshall Plan (for the complete reconstruction of the European economy), the Palestinians have received upwards of 15 times the Marshall Plan per capita.

More: Ray Buursma: Excuses and reasons: Israel and Palestine

You disregard the fact that this money was famously siphoned off into the bank accounts of corrupt Palestinian leaders, while the average Palestinian has continued to live in abject poverty.

You disregard the fact that the leaders of Hamas, each worth several billion dollars, live in Doha in opulence, while their people continue to suffer.

You disregard the fact that the Hamas and Fatah in the Palestinian Authority carry out thousands of documented arbitrary arrests, torture and degrading treatment and executions without trial of Palestinians each year. Indeed, the vast majority of Palestinians killed in an average year are killed by their own leadership and not by Israel.

You disregard the fact that the Palestinian leadership has rejected each and every peace deal put on the table since November 1947, including the generous deal offered by Prime Minister Ehud Barak at Camp David in 2000, which included a withdrawal from 91% of the West Bank.

You disregard the fact that all Jewish settlements were unilaterally removed from the Gaza Strip in 2005, as a one-sided attempt at making peace, and it has not been occupied by Israelis since.

You disregard the fact that over the past 18 years since Israel’s disengagement, the Hamas administration chose to invest the billions of dollars of humanitarian aid it received in building a vast network of complex tunnels, military bases and weapons arsenals underneath civilian areas in Gaza, while purchasing and producing tens of thousands of rockets that were fired at Israeli civilian targets.

Indeed, the Palestinian leadership has been granted time and time again the “power to effect change,” but instead they chose to invest all of their resources in a futile attempt at removing all Jews from the river to the sea. Putting all of the blame on Israel, as the “bully” in this scenario, completely disregards the responsibility that the Palestinian leadership has for the retched and frustrated state of the Palestinian people.

Furthermore, any attempt to justify, sympathize with, or rationalize the genocide that was carried out against Jews on Oct. 7 is abhorrent and shameful. I have many dreams for the Palestinians, but none of them include indiscriminately raping, torturing, burning alive, slaughtering and mutilating over 1,400 innocent Jews in their homes, and then kidnapping grandparents, pregnant mothers, boys, girls and babies and holding them hostage in underground tunnels in Gaza.

You, Mr. Buursma, should be ashamed of yourself.

— Craig Wierda is a resident of Holland.

This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: My Take: Oversimplifying Gaza conflict misses the mark