Dan DeWalt, a frequent contributor to these pages and one of the founders of this newspaper, writes that if he didn't love his country, he "wouldn't spend so much time trying to get it to live up to its purported principles."
Tim Wessel's Viewpoint chastising Vermonters who are advocating for a ceasefire in Palestine was grounded in half-truths and speculative musings.
The most astonishing error was the statement that "this war" started on Oct. 7, 2023. The October attack is but the latest act of horrific violence that has rocked Palestine and Israel. Conflict has been the ongoing reality in Palestine ever since the Zionist project to give Jews a homeland at the expense of the Palestinian inhabitants became aggressively active 100 or so years ago.
Starting in 1931, Zionist militias and later the Israeli Defense Forces planned and conducted massacres in Palestinian towns and villages.
The extent of the violence was debated and lamented in 1948 by Israeli leaders at the time, but the prevailing view aligned with one expressed by Yitzhak Shamir in 1943, before he became prime minister:
"Neither Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify terrorism as a means of combat. We are very far from having any moral qualms as far as our national war goes. We have before us the command of the Torah, whose morality surpasses that of any other body of laws in the world: 'Ye shall blot them out to the last man.'"
In 1982, as many as 3,500 Muslim Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon were murdered, raped, and tortured by Israel's Lebanese Christian Phalangist proxies under the watch of Ariel Sharon, who, while castigated by Israeli leaders at the time, went on to become a major political player and prime minister.
Even when Palestine was not under direct military assault, the reality of the occupation was not merely one of lost land and inconvenience. Between 2008 and Oct. 7, 2023, over 5,000 Palestinians were killed by air- and surface-launched explosives and live ammunition. In that same time period, 319 Israelis were killed by Palestinians.
In addition, a steady stream of kidnappings (euphemistically called "detentions"), torture, and water and land deprivation - plus control over Palestinian rights to marry, work, worship, and thrive - have kept occupied Palestine under a tight lid of oppression and misery, enduring for multiple generations of people trying to stay alive there.
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Wessel thinks that Palestinians who have remained in Israel since 1948 are accorded full rights of citizenship. In reality, a plethora of laws favor Jewish land ownership, building permits, and religious/cultural rights at the expense of the Palestinians.
Just as Barack Obama's presidency did not signify the end of racism in the United States, neither do the rights of "Arab-Israelis" (a construct used by authorities and parroted by the media to deny the existence of the Palestinians' status as a people) indicate any equality of rights in Israel.
Wessel implies that the genesis of the word "genocide" means that it refers exclusively to the violence perpetrated against the Jews by the Nazis. Native Americans, Armenians, and Tutsis are just three examples of how men in power are more than willing to engage in genocide in order to meet their goals.
He questions the use of "genocide" by referencing the population growth in Gaza over the past 25 years. Nobody accused the Israelis of genocide until this latest indiscriminate and all-encompassing revenge that is their response to the Hamas attack.
Even the U.S. judge at the International Court of Justice voted in accord with the overwhelming ruling that South Africa's claim that Israel is committing genocide has more than enough legal merit to continue to the next phase of the tribunal proceedings.
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Wessel characterizes those who speak out in support of Palestine as being played by the propaganda machine of Hamas. This is a little rich, considering that his talking points are part and parcel of the rhetoric generated by AIPAC, which is one of the most powerful pro-Israel propaganda machines influencing U.S. politics today.
He also doesn't realize that "ceasefire" intrinsically refers to all firing - in this case, both Israeli and Palestinian. He doesn't realize that not a single supporter of Palestinians supports rape.
We abhor and condemn all rape - be it by Hamas or Israeli soldiers, as in the ongoing sexual assault of Palestinian women prisoners - as a horrible tactic used by combatants (including Americans) around the world.
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Wessel thinks that we don't bother to understand the history underlying this conflict.
In fact, we are constantly deepening our learning and understanding of the true nature of the history and today's realities in Palestine precisely so that we can correct the one-sided, partial story propagated daily by Israel's apologists.
Indeed, on Sunday afternoons during the month of April, Southern Vermont for Palestine will be offering a series of films and discussions at the Latchis Theater about the true nature of life in Palestine. These events - available to all, with or without a donation to defray costs - seek to enlighten rather than embitter.
Some actions are so egregious that they can be defended only by attacking the credibility or intentions of those who criticize them. Sadly, that seems to be the case here.
We would do better to look the entire truth in the eye, to understand how it has come to be, what our own nation's complicity is, and what we can do about it.
This Voices Response was submitted to The Commons.