Letter: Harris vs Trump for Israel

Dear editor:

Mimi Ito’s response was an excellent rebuttal of Bruce Ticker’s column (“Trump or Harris: Either Choice is Risky for Israel” boulderjewshnews.org October 1, 2024) as she noted that Trump’s policies had been very good for Israel: the establishment of the Abraham Accords, cutting funding to the Palestinian Authority in accord with the Taylor Force Act, and also cutting funds to UNRWA which has abetted Arab governments in keeping the Palestine refugees in limbo for generations, and allowed refugee “camps” to become breeding grounds for anti-Israel terrorism.

I would like to address other aspects of the column, such as Ticker’s assertion that President Trump would probably use his second term to allow Benjamin Netanyahu to do “whatever he wants,” with the implication that the IDF has been brutal in the past years’ fighting against Hamas, Hezbollah, and other Iranian proxies. The truth, of course, is that military leaders, such as Major John Spencer of West Point’s Urban Warfare Division, have praised Israeli soldiers for the extraordinary efforts that they make to avoid harming  civilians, achieving the lowest ratio of civilian casualties to combatant casualties ever seen in urban warfare, despite the fact that Hamas deliberately built its fortifications in a manner that erases any distinction between civilian areas and combat zones. The same is true in Lebanon where Hezbollah hides weapons in citizens’ homes.

Ticker also impugns the integrity of both Trump and Netanyahu, noting that both have been charged with criminal activities. What he doesn’t note is that the Israeli judiciary has a long history of extensive investigation and prolonged trials, often never reaching a conclusion. As far back as 2019, American jurist Arthur Fergensen was accusing the Israeli Supreme Court of attempting to nullify the choices made by Israelis on Election Day.

https://www.jns.org/watch-mark-levin-special-episode-about-coup-against-netanyahu

In a similar fashion, cases against Donald Trump have been conducted in a very injudicious manner. He was convicted of fraud in a case in which the loan in question had been paid back in full and the bank said it would be delighted to loan money to him again in the future. In another case, a misdemeanor was elevated to a felony so that Trump could be brought to trial (the statute of limitation for misdemeanors had expired}, the exact nature of the charges against Trump were not made clear to his lawyers, and the twelve jurors did not have to agree on the nature of the crime that Trump was alleged to be covering up.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/unanimously-agree-trump-jury

Toby F. Block
Atlanta, Georgia