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from Washington Report on Middle East Affairs - November/December 2020 - Vol. XXXIX, No. 7

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Middle East strategy,” that the IsraeliUnited Arab Emirates-Bahrain accords “include the reinforcement of harsh authoritarian rulers; the deepening of U.S. entanglement in a sectarian conflict among Sunni and Shi’i regimes; and the marginalization of the issue on which Israel’s future most depends: relations with the Palestinians.”

As a Palestinian American who cares deeply not only about my Palestinian sisters and brothers but also about my many Israeli friends, I wish the U.S. media would report more on the terrible conditions in places such as Hebron, which illustrate the extreme apartheid regime that Israel has imposed on the Palestinians.

The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam is the title of a book by the Jewish American thinker Barbara W. Tuchman describing the blindness that comes with the illusion of inexorable political and military power wielded at the expense of others.

Hebron is just the most visible manifestation of Israel’s march of folly, which can only lead to even more extreme instability in what has effectively become Greater Israel.

Philip Farah, Vienna, VA

PALESTINIANS LACK ACCESS TO THEIR OWN WATER To The Washington Post, Oct. 4, 2020

The Sept. 26 front-page article “West Bank bananas were ‘green gold.’ Now farmers’ fields run dry,” outlined the fate of Palestinian agriculture on the West Bank since the seizure of the territory, and thus control of its aquifers and water, by the Israelis in 1967. With interviews with Israelis and Palestinians, the piece made clear the disconnect between Israeli words and the harsh reality lived by the Palestinians on their lands. Once-thriving Palestinian farms have died or are dying because of a lack of irrigation.

Palestinian farmers are not permitted to dig wells, unlike the Israeli settlements, and the natural springs traditionally used have dried up because of the pumping of the aquifers. Palestinians cannot buy water from the Israeli water company. As the article pointed out, the cutting up of the West Bank into numerous areas prevents the Palestinian Authority from distributing what water it does control from wet areas to dry.

There is more than one way to force a people from their homeland. Destroying Palestinian livelihoods may be slower, but it is effective.

Mary Post, Springfield, VA To The Aspen Times, Sept. 8, 2020

We need to think of the people of Yemen while voting this November.

Beset by war since 2015, an estimated 3.6 million have been displaced and 24 million are in need of urgent humanitarian aid. An estimated 85,000 Yemeni children under the age of five have died of hunger, and American-made bombs have killed civilians in a series of unlawful air strikes. Yemen now faces overlapping tragedies as COVID-19 further aggravates the combined toll of conflict and mass starvation.

Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO) has had a hand in enabling this crisis. In 2019, he voted against a resolution that would have withdrawn U.S. support for the Saudi-led coalition. The coalition—which backs the Yemeni government in its fight against Houthi rebels—has received extensive assistance from the U.S. since Yemen’s war began. America has supported intelligence operations, provided targeting advice, sold billions of dollars worth of weapons, and refueled mid-air warplanes carrying out air strikes. This involvement has facilitated the suffering of Yemen’s people. We can trace munitions that have mangled Yemeni civilians to facilities in Texas, Oklahoma and Arizona; the bomb that killed 40 children on a school bus in Dhahyan in 2018 was made on American soil.

As voters, we need to consider this reality. Yemen’s war continues, and it is being fueled by officials who act in our name.

Isabel Wolfer, Aspen, CO WAR AND OUR PRIORITIES DURING A PANDEMIC To the Quad-City Times, Sept. 1, 2020

Two stories on Aug. 24th are a reminder that most of us are preoccupied with the COVID-19 nightmare, the Nov. 3rd elections, the wall and the economy.

Still, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere continue to impact the lives of our young men and women.

Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley at Rice University says “the golden egg of Trump’s reelection is going to be promises kept, such as...keeping America out of foreign wars like Afghanistan and Iraq.”

Maybe, but the current wars continue to impact the lives of our young men and women.

Since January 2017, there have been 60 U.S. military fatalities in Iraq, with 172 wounded; in Afghanistan, there have been 63 deaths and 425 wounded. Total U.S. fatalities to date since 2003 in Iraq are 4,584 and since 2001 in Afghanistan, 2,451.

Our wounded military has an everlasting impact on the lives of those who come home. Former Marine veteran Robert Neal Jr., knows that as he checks on his fellow veterans; they are dying at the rate of 17 per day by suicide, according to a Veterans Affairs report.

Since 2003, there have been 32,455 wounded veterans from the Iraq war and 20,662 wounded from the Afghanistan war since 2001.

The financial cost of these wars at the rate of $250 million a day is now more than $5.6 trillion.

Ironically, Congress couldn’t agree to continue to spend $600 a week to save workers from destitution resulting from the pandemic.

Isn’t it time we really stopped all wars?

Vincent G. Thomas, Rock Island, IL THE ETHICS OF MODERNIZING OUR NUCLEAR MISSILES To The Seattle Times, Sept. 10, 2020

Re: “Air Force awards $13.3 billion contract for nuclear missiles” (Sept. 8, Nation):

Willthisprojecttrulymakeussaferasa nation?Whenworldtensionsareskyhigh, whenanuclearaccidentmighttriggeraresponsefromoneoftheothernuclearnations,whenhackerscandotheirwork, howdoescontinuingthischaradeofnucleardeterrencereallycontributetonationalsecurity?

Is it total naiveté to imagine, instead of spending more money to “modernize” our nuclear weapons, that the U.S. take the lead in calling a conference to rid these immoral weapons from the planet?

Louise Lansberry, Seattle, WA ■