Dear Letter to the Editor:
Urooba Shaikh's anti Israel screed -- " Israel's Assault on Gaza Shows How Colonialism and the Climate Are Linked" -- demonstrates her total and complete ignorance of the over 3000 year indigenous Jewish presence in what today is Israel.
"According to biblical texts and the scholars who study them, it was probably around 1250 BC that the Hebrews came in and divided the land into areas governed by the twelve Jewish tribes, who started to form one Jewish nation..Sometime around 1030 BC to 928 BC the country became a sovereign Jewish kingdom, referred to in the Scriptures as the United Israelite Monarchy." ("Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth", Noa Tishby, 2021, page 27).
Similarly, South African Klaas Mokomole, head coordinator of Africans for Peace and a former BDS activist says: "Israel is not a settler state. The Jewish population is indigenous to Israel and are the descendants of refugees who were cast out centuries ago. It is irreconcilable how one considers the original inhabitants returning to their ancestral homelands participating in a settler colonial project,” He also stated, “I'm South African. Calling Israel 'Apartheid' puts the BS in BDS", (Jewish News of Northern California, 4/22/22).
Finally, Ms. Shaikh might want to take a break from her molecular biology studies and study the recent brief and eloquent words of New York Times columnist Bret Stephens:
"Whatever else it is, Jewish nationalism — that is, Zionism — is the oldest continuous anticolonial movement in history, starting well before the Romans sought to de-Judaize the area by calling their Levantine colony Palestina. Hanukkah, the festival of lights, is one such reminder, celebrating the recovery of Jerusalem from colonizing Greeks in the second century B.C.E." ("Settler Colonialism: A Guide for the Sincere", Bret Stephens, NY Times, 2/6/24").
Richard Sherman, Florida