Congratulations to Sara Roy of the Harvard Center for Middle Eastern Studies for her timely, insightful Nov. 23 op-ed (“Where’s our humanity for Gaza?”). It’s refreshing and encouraging to see a column that portrays the plight of the Palestinians.
We see the Israeli side of the longstanding land war between Israel and the Palestinians all the time. There are two sides to this conflict. Roy marshaled her facts and showed to any unbiased reader that the root cause of the conflict is Israel’s illegal occupation of Gaza for nearly half a century and its ruthless economic restrictions of the Palestinians.
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William McDermott, while citing "two sides to this conflict," has only chosen ONE -the same side as the myopic Ms. Roy - to level his unfounded accusations. Gaza is NOT "occupied" by Israel - in fact, there are NO Israelis in Gaza.
During the fighting Israel continued to supply electricity, food, water and other
assistance to Gaza's civilians in order to minimize their distress. "Ruthless economic restriuctions?" Israel has provided Gaza with food, medicine, building materials, virtually EVERYTHING short of the very rockets Hamas is using to attack Israel.
Gaza's misery is entirely self-inflicted; the 7800 acres of agricultural land that
Israel abandoned when they left Gaza in 2005 were destroyed by the Arabs
within a week. As for the blockade, what sane country would open its borders unconditionally to a neighboring people who have proven in word and deed that they mean to destroy it?