Lack of final status resolution to Israel-Palestine conflict worsening public health protections from covid19

      The lack of medical and emergency preparedness to contain the spread of covid19 (c19) in Gaza is only the latest exposure of Israel using BDS tactics to single out, demonize and delegitimize the right to exist of Palestine originally in a 2 state solution.  The BDS tactics, such as not remitting tax transfers on imports and exports and limits on goods allowed to be shipped into Gaza intended to "put Gazans on a diet" h/t Dov Weisglass, are laundered by exaggerating security fears by incorrectly using rockets and missiles as interchangeable terms to confuse people about their destructive capabilities. 


   "Pro-Israel" people and organizations of people across the political spectrum from 'progressive except for Palestine' refuted here to the Republican Jewish Coalition, Zionist Organization of America and demographically growing 


We are not entering the Sanders Era
If Bernie Sanders is the future of Judaism (“Bernie Sanders is 78, but he represents the future of American Jewry,” Voices, Oct. 24), then we are in serious trouble.
Regardless of how one feels about candidate Sanders, I believe that there is no longterm future for the Jewish people without Judaism. As Aaron Freedman quotes The Forward, “Sanders isn’t religious, he doesn’t have any close ties to institutional American Judaism.”
Without Judaism, there would never have been a Jewish people once we were driven from our homeland.
Aside from that, his numbers from Pew research ignore a subtext that suggests that the drift among Jews toward increasing liberalism may be short lived. According to Pew, Orthodox Jews have 4.1 children per adult woman, while the remainder of Jews have fewer than 1.9.
Orthodox Jews thus will double in size within a generation, while the remaining Jewish population will remain stable or shrink slightly. Is Sanders the future of the Jewish people? I think not.
PAUL CHANDLER
Falls Church




moderate to traditional Orthodox community Public Affairs Councils and the Rabbinical Council of America have supported the jointly negotiated, with USA moderation, 2 state solution so unsuccessfully that the window for the 2 state option for a final status peace has closed per past Secretary of State John F. Kerry in 2016.  The Jared Kushner-led 'Deal of the century' is worse not better.


   Coexistence of Jews with Christian and Muslim Palestinians within pre-1967 Israeli de facto borders (green line) is still fraught with lack of concern for speakers of other languages than Hebrew.  The spirit of the Israeli nation-state law of 2018 defining the Jewish character of Israel may be manifesting itself in the exclusion of Arabic from covid19 public health updates.  


   Lack of culturally appropriate and linguistically accessible public health info inside the green line doesn't bode well for the OPT where this letter may be ignored.  The letter may be used electorally against its signers as past Palestinian rights support, conflated with dovishness to Iran, has been used against Senator Van Hollen from 2006-12 (when a House of Representatives member) by his 2012 opponent and recurred in the 2016 Senate primary.  Donna Edwards was inaccurately portrayed as having extreme views to Van Hollen's centrist views.  The backlash to Van Hollen's support of Palestinian rights is another example of centrist-extremist politics creating polarization, or chaos, to move the 'center' of 'acceptable public discourse' to the right in a 'new normal.'