Israel: Violent record must not be swept under rug

Re: “Coaxed by Trump, Israel bars Muslim congresswomen,” (TNT, 8/16).

Many citizens are uninformed about our country’s history with Israel. Since 1949, U.S. taxpayers have given Israel $333 billion.

We pay for their weapons, which they’ve used to murder tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians: school children, residents in high-rise apartment buildings, 12-year-old boys playing soccer on the Mediterranean beach – and the IDF’s favorite targets: ambulances and news reporters.

In 1967 the USS Liberty, a listening spy ship posted in the Mediterranean, was attacked over two days by Israeli fighter planes, killing 34 U.S. Navy sailors. (The State Department hid the fact that it was Israelis who killed our sailors.)

The Holocaust really happened, but it does not justify the mass killings that the state of Israel has committed over the last 70 years.

I applaud Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, who will stand up for what is right and just.

This story was originally published August 28, 2019 at 5:30 PM.