Letter: One Conversation Too Few?

Dear editor:

I would hope that even Ed Kass would admit that brief conversations with one or two people are not enough to gain an understanding of the complex relationship between Israelis and Palestinians. (“A Short Conversation With a Resident From the South Hebron Hills” Boulder Jewish News 11/25/2025)

Arab leaders began threatening violence against the Zionist community in Palestine and the Mizrachi Jews of the Middle East and North Africa even before the UN General Assembly approved the 1947 UN Plan for the division of the 20% of the British Mandate for Palestine which had not been used to create the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan.

https://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/news/the-expulsion-of-jews-from-arab-countries-and-iran–an-untold-history

Arab-initiated violence, aimed at preventing the establishment of a modern Jewish state on the land of the defunct Ottoman Empire and Arab efforts to overcome the shame of their armies having failed to defeat the Zionists eventually saw the creation of two refugee communities — between 400,000 and 600,000 Arabs who fled or were displaced from Palestine and 1.000.000 Mizrachi Jews who were driven from their homes in the Muslim countries of the Middle East and North Africa. Some of the Jews emigrated to the United States or France, but Israel absorbed and uplifted 800,000 of them. Their descendants comprise the majority of Israel’s current Jewish population. Every position in Israeli governance, except Prime Minister, has been held, at one time or another, by someone with roots in the Mizrachi communities.

In contrast, Arab countries refused to take in Arabs who had fled or been displaced from Palestine. Multigenerational descendants of the 1940’s refugees have grown into 6,000,000 “Palestine refugees” on UNRWA rolls — with their leaders insisting that they remain on the world’s dole until Israel is forced to give them the homes the “refugees” claim their parents,grandparents, great-grandparents,… lost when Israel declared independence. However, Israel is unlikely to grant the “refugees” this “Right of Return” because of the sheer numbers involved and because the “refugees” have grown up seeing their peers honored and rewarded for killing Jews.

https://www.jns.org/the-palestinian-refugee-hoax

https://www.cfr.org/blog/palestinian-authority-continues-teach-hate-and-reward-terror-0

In fact, both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas have failed to meet the expectations of the Oslo Accords, Neither has made any effort to build the economy of the area under their administration and neither has attempted to improve relations with Israel.

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/hamas-fires-rockets-israeli-cities-2025-04-06

https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-874771

In closing, I’d like to suggest that readers seek sources of information which offer a point of view that differs from those quoted by Ed Kass and also pose a question for readers to consider: why are members of the EU funding Palestinian building in Area C (under full Israeli security and civil control) while ignoring the Palestinians’ failure to develop Areas A and B which are. respectively, under full and partial Palestinian control. and should be used as the beginnings of a state coexisting peacefully with Israel?

https://www.meforum.org/mef-online/europes-illegal-land-grab-the-unlawful-palestinian-settlements-youve-never-heard-of-part-i

Toby F. Block
Atlanta, GA