A history of Israel

It is historical amnesia that predisposes the politically correct to disregard Israel’s right to self-determination.

There is a history of Israel and the Jewish people. There is no history of a Palestine (except as a British mandate following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire) or a Palestinian people.

Jerusalem’s Grand Mufti staged pogroms against Jews prior to the creation of the modern Israeli state; he also spent much of WWII as Hitler’s guest promoting the Final Solution.

The Jews who staged uprisings, joined partisans and resistance movements and fought the perpetrators of the Holocaust were on the winning side.

Historically, that has significance for borders redrawn and nations established in the aftermath of war.

Another aspect of the amnesia is that the so called Palestinian territories were never “Palestinian.” Gaza was part of Egypt and the West Bank part of Jordan before 1967.

Interestingly, neither of those two countries have demanded the land back.

Wortman needs to read the report of the Center for Religious Freedom quoting the Saudi sponsored materials distributed at 80 percent of the mosques and Islamic centers in the USA, New York Police District Commissioner Kelly’s report on the operations of Islamist cells in this country, the Duelfer Iraqi Survey and the Koran.

More than three-quarters of a million Jews living precariously in the Middle East found shelter in Israel, as did thousands of Ethiopian Jews. Arabs and Muslims serve in the Israeli Knesset.

Jews are not allowed into Saudi Arabia, a peninsula once inhabited by Jewish, Christian and pagan tribes before Islam, the antithesis of multiculturalism, diversity, democracy and tolerance, used naked aggression to control the area.

In its wake were ethnic cleansing, a theocratic political ideology claiming supremacy, devotion to jihad to achieve the caliphate and terrible treatment of those subjected.

Perhaps when Ms. Wortman has learned some history she will find something more substantive to apologize for than the existence and decency of Israel and the USA.

Len Willens, Green Valley