BRATTLEBORO-Mark Treinkman's full-throated advocacy of genocide provides us with a patronizing litany of reasons why Israel should be able to continue to slaughter babies, torture doctors, rape prisoners, dismember children, bomb ambulances, bulldoze homes, starve an entire population, and carry out other horrors that are illegal under international and U.S. law.
None of this is rhetorical.
If the Gaza genocide has been too much for you lately - if you have chosen to look away - know that it is not only ongoing, but it has spread to the West Bank where, just in the past two weeks, Israeli soldiers executed an American peace activist, shot a Palestinian teenager for looking out the window, and bulldozed the city of Jenin, all while soldier-protected settlers continue their rampage, attacking farmers, schoolchildren and anyone else who happens to cross their ever-expanding paths.
According to Mr. Treinkman, we are supposed to accept all of this because, well, in order to be safe, Jews should have a theocracy centered on apartheid and occupation, which has extended for more than 76 years and grows more brutal by the day.
In standing by for nearly a year without meaningful action, the world has unleashed a beast that will stop at nothing to achieve its goal of territorial dominance and total ethnic cleansing of Palestinians between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
My question - not to Mr. Treinkman, who has neatly rearranged history in his own mind to justify this genocide, but to everyone else - is: Why must we accept the premise of a Jewish state grounded in the biblical mythology of a chosen people when said state's conduct is tantamount to the worst, most heinous regimes history has to offer?
Israel has made it clear that it is willing to use any means necessary to cleanse Palestine of Palestinians, and maybe it will succeed. But as long as Palestinians exist in the world, their spirit and steadfastness will live.
Meanwhile, Israel - willing to treat Palestinians as bugs to be exterminated - is consuming its own soul from within, taking Zionist apologists like Mr. Treinkman along with it.
There is one country that can stop these crimes - ours. But as long as we swallow the platitudes and excuses of a political class that has been bought and paid for by Israel, as long as we fail to insist that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz change course immediately, as long as we allow our tax dollars to pay for the weapons Israel needs to conduct this genocide, we are just like them - accepting of a horror that is being carried out against children and innocents.
To all those who are at this point clutching your pearls and turning to your computers to dash off letters and op-eds accusing me of antisemitism, go for it.
I know what I believe - that Israel is fundamentally wrong and must be stopped - and I know that it has nothing to do with enmity for Jews.
I have been speaking these truths for decades and will continue to do so regardless of the propaganda you have been fed and feel obligated to repeat ad nauseum.
Kate Casa
Brattleboro
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