Yet Another Unpublished Letter-to-the-Editor

On March 17, 2021, the UK Guardian published an oped by Salem Barahmeh entitled, "The Israeli and Palestinian elections offend democracy – each in their own way".

I wrote a letter-to-the-editor and it was emailed the following day:

In his March 17 op-ed, Salem Barahmeh, of the Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy, conveniently blames Israel for the lack of democracy in the Palestinian Authority. Israel has never prevented President Mahmoud Abbas, last elected 16 years ago, from initiating elections. The responsibility for the regime Abbas oversees which among other actions severely restricts the freedoms, liberties and rights of its population too numerous to list cannot be assigned to Israel. At some time in their history, the Arabs of Palestine must assume accountability for their own actions or lack thereof.

In bemoaning the fact that upwards of 700,000 Jewish Israelis are living in the territories claimed by the Palestinian Authority, Barahmeh ignores the pre-state period of 1920-1948, when thousands of Jews who were living in those same areas such as Jerusalem's Old City and its environs, Hebron, Gaza, Nablus, Etzion Bloc and other locations then called by the United Nations in its 1947 partition plan as Judea and Samaria, were removed due to both a campaign of terror promoted by the then Mufti Amin El-Husseini and the hostilities Arabs launched after rejecting that internationally supported compromise arrangement which the Jewish community of Mandate Palestine did accept. Had Jews not been targeted in an ethnic cleansing operation, just  as twenty percent or more of Israel's current citizenry are Arab, there should be no reason 20% of Palestine's residents, if not citizens, could be Jewish.

Yisrael Medad

Shiloh, Israel

I waited a few days and I don't see it.

So now it's public here.

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