Letter to the Editor: The events of Oct. 7

In the March 6 Newton News, Sen. Ernst cites the fact that two tenths of one percent of the 13,000 employees of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Gaza participated in the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas that brutally murdered 1,200 Israelis. She states that for this reason, among others, the U.S. should permanently stop all funding for UNRWA (funding is currently suspended by the Biden administration). She says U.S. taxpayers’ dollars should not be used to support terrorists.

This is a gross misrepresentation of the actual situation in Israel/Palestine. For many years prior to Oct. 7, Israel has maintained a military occupation of the Palestinian territories of East Jerusalem and the West Bank, systematically denying human rights to Palestinians, confiscating their land, stealing their resources and terrorizing their people. Israel has maintained a blockade on Gaza, making it tantamount to an open-air prison where Israel controls what goods and which people can enter or leave. In the West Bank, the Israeli military routinely burst into Palestinian homes during the night and detain children as young as 12 for months at a time with no due process. The military also looks the other way, and even actively supports, programs against Palestinian villagers by radical Jewish settlers.

Many groups, Christian, Muslim and Jewish, have worked for decades to find nonviolent means to effect change for their people. However, over the past year Israel’s leadership has been taken over by right wing extremists who openly call for the elimination of non-Jews from the land. This is the context in which one must see the events of Oct. 7. This is by no means a justification of what Hamas did. But when peaceful efforts result only in further degradation, many oppressed people will turn to violence.

And since Oct. 7 Israel has tried to justify the indiscriminate bombing and the denial of food, fuel, water, medicine and other supplies necessary for survival in Gaza by blaming Hamas. At least 30,000 Gazans, a large portion of whom were women or children, have died. Epidemiologists estimate that 85,000 more will die even if there is a ceasefire, because of the devastation already wrought.

My message to Sen. Ernst and Mr. Biden is: if you don’t think U.S. dollars should be used to support terrorism, stop sending arms to Israel, a purveyor of state terrorism if ever there was one.

Larry Anderson

Newton