PUTNEY-People who study conflict resolution say that you can't win an argument on the basis of facts when the other side is coming from a place of feelings (and delusions). Nonetheless, facts are facts. In regards to the Apartheid-Free Pledge coming up for a vote in Brattleboro and Newfane, I want readers of The Commons to know:
• Israel is indeed an "apartheid" state. Palestinians are not allowed to drive on the same roads as Israelis. They need a special driver's license to go to a hospital on the other side of the "separation barrier" - a 20-foot-high wall snaking through the West Bank that both encloses and separates people in this disputed territory.
• Palestinian children heading to school and workers on their way to a job have to pass through checkpoints with military guards or AI facial recognition scanners. It is blatantly not true that people who live in Israel-Palestine "participate as equals in every aspect of society" as one writer claims ["'Baseless accusations' have no place on a town ballot," Letters, Feb. 12].
• Israel is by all means a "settler colonial" state. Israelis continue to seize land that Palestinians have lived on for generations - land that by deed and international agreements belongs to Palestinians. Israelis have renamed towns and villages, stolen water resources, destroyed olive groves, and established enclaves in the form of modern suburbs and outposts that encroach on Palestinian villages. Should the Bible really be the arbiter of Israelis' claim?
• Israel unrelentingly uses military force to control the Palestinian territories. In East Jerusalem and the West Bank, the Israel Defense Forces along with armed settlers brazenly attack Palestinian civilians. Their bulldozers and bombs destroy homes, schools, and mosques. In Gaza, quadcopter sniper drones targeted and disproportionately killed medical staff and journalists.
To be clear, the Apartheid-Free Community Pledge affirms a commitment to "freedom, justice, and equality for the Palestinian people and all people." It opposes "all forms of racism, discrimination, and oppression." And yes, it calls on us to "join others in working to end all support to Israel's apartheid regime, settler colonialism, and military occupation."
Some may argue, out of fear or not knowing, that the pledge is too scary, too radical, or one-sided. However, the bottom line for me is that the United States is indisputably complicit in Israel's brutal campaigns of death and destruction.
I do not believe that our government should support the means for any country to reduce cities to rubble, kill tens of thousands of people, or strangle a population that also has the right to self-defense. Not in my name, and not with my tax dollars.
Shana Frank
Putney
This letter to the editor was submitted to The Commons.
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