By Bela “Bill” Suhayda
Charles Coddington, in an obtuse article to the Voice (November 16 edition), dredged up hundreds of years of history to explain the meaning of “Anti-Semitism” and how wrong we are using the term. The Chas argues semantics as babies are burned alive in Israel. Hate is hate no matter what words you use, Chas. Chas suggests Palestinians have been occupied and slaughtered for 75 years even though it has been Palestinians and Hamas who always attack first in breaking agreements for peace. Nothing justifies the murder of civilian men, women, and children Mr. Codington….Nothing!!!. The October 7 terrorist attack is a crime against humanity. The 1,400 Israelis massacred that day had nothing to do with what happened many years before their birth or the history you think justifies their systematic extermination. The U.N., U.S., and British, 75 years ago, created a nation in which displaced Jewish refugees and Holocaust survivors, escaping persecution in Europe, were given a home where Israel is today. These people along with indigenous Israelites legally lived where their children live today. These people purchased property, built homes, and raised families. The ancestors of persecuted Holocaust survivors have lived where Israel is today for thousands of years. No other nation, after World War II, stepped up to take in survivors of Nazi death camps.
Nowhere in Coddington’s article does he mention Hamas just murdered 1,400 Jews. Nowhere does he mention six million Jews were incinerated in the ovens of Nazi death camps. Coddington calls the settlement of Jews in Israel “immoral and illegal.” The Chas doesn’t grasp the meaning of the words, “immoral and illegal.” So I’ll help him here. Taking hostages is immoral and illegal as is beheading men, women, and children. Rape murders and the parading of the naked dead dismembered bodies of rape victims through Gaza streets is another. It is immoral and illegal to carve babies out of the bodies of live pregnant women. Beheading and dismembering children in front of their parents, before killing the parents, is immoral and illegal.
Hamas’ taking the phones of victims, then taking pictures, and sending those pictures of the mutilated bodies, by phone, to immediate family members should qualify. Just my opinion; It is not an immoral, illegal, act to allow people whose ancestors have lived in a place for thousands of years to give Holocaust survivors and victims of persecution a home.
No one is guilty of anything that happened before our birth. It has been three-quarters of a century since the establishment of Israel as a nation. There have been many agreements for two-state solutions to peace between Israel and the Palestinian people. Those agreements were never broken by Israel. Israel has never attacked the Palastinians or Hamas before being attacked by them first. Israel’s response to being attacked has been the same as our reaction to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor December 7, 1941.
Hamas exists for one purpose…the extermination of the Jewish people. So Hamas makes sure peace cannot exist. It’s about job security. And so the chants continue….From the river to the sea, a call for genocide of all Israelis between the Jordan River and the Mediterranian Sea. This phrase is being chanted on our university campuses. You’ll hear, “Death to America”, as well!
It is the moral and legal right for Israelis to fight for their existence.
More than just a thought.