The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement is on the right side of history in its fight against the illegal occupation of Palestine, which has been going on for the last 70 years.
The Westchester County Board of Legislators showed cowardice in its condemnation of the BDS movement. Legislator Alfreda Williams of Elmsford displayed extraordinary courage in her opposition to the attack on the BDS movement. They are just as criminal as Gov. Andrew Cuomo is in his campaign of, “If you boycott Israel we will boycott you”.
It is appropriate that this year is the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, which sanctioned and justified the illegal occupation of Palestine, displacing millions of Sunni Palestinians that had been living there for more than a century under the Ottoman Empire. This evil, racist and systemic human rights crime has had an economic and political use of force by the white Western world—namely the U.K., U.S. and Russia—that used money and military force to authorize the British mandate on Palestine in 1923 and its partitioning in 1947.
The same religious rationale that has been used to justify this illegal occupation is analogous to “Manifest Destiny” and how that was provided justification as an example of divine providence to countenanced the slaughter, rape and murder of indigenous people on this continent by the so-called superior “Anglo-Saxon” race.
Betty and David Berenson should be reminded that the establishment of Israel was an illegal act based upon the 1947 U.N. Charter which specifically said that you cannot assign land without the consent of the majority of the population. That consent was never authorized by the Palestinians.
Clifford Jackson is a resident of Larchmont. The views are expressed are his.
