To the Editor:
Who are the real victims and who are the real perpetrators?
Sophisticated Israeli propaganda would have U.S. citizens believe that extremely heavily armed Israeli “Defense” Forces are the innocent victims, who have the “right to defend” themselves against Palestinian “perpetrators.”
As spoken by United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in October 24, 2023, “The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation. They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced and their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing.”
The Israeli “Defense” Forces have been perpetrators of a multitude of crimes against humanity during their illegal military control over the Occupied Palestinian Territories, that includes the Gaza Ghetto. Ongoing genocide is taking place as I write, during Trump’s current “bored of peace” ceasefire.
Palestinians have the legally mandated “right of self-determination” as guaranteed by international human rights law. However, the U.S. has vetoed about 50 UNSC resolutions written with the attempt to constrain Israel’s illegal activities, to no avail.
Palestinians have a legally mandated “right to defend” themselves against the illegal Israeli “Defense” Forces actions that have held them captive within the walled-off Gaza Ghetto for nearly 19 years. Palestinian resistance fighters have the exact same right to take up armed resistance against illegal occupation, as did armed Jewish resistance fighters held captive within the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II.
—Michael Jacobsen, Bellingham; April 15, 2026