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Alternative to BART
offers more than ride
Even though I get a great senior discount on BART, I haven’t ridden for years for fear of crime, the smells, the dirt, ad nauseam.
I still enjoy going to San Francisco for musical theater, the Academy of Science, Cirque du Soleil, etc. If you are over 50, think about joining your local senior club and going on day trips. Cost includes bus, usually lunch and the event. Let the bus driver fight the traffic and parking, and sit back and enjoy making new friends.
Carol Heath
Pleasant Hill
World has turned its
back on Palestinians
Re: “Airstrikes, threats increase as death toll soars to 1,600” (Page A1, Oct. 10).
The recent front-page piece on Israel and Palestine portraying the conflict as an equal, two-sided war without the context of Israel’s illegal occupation of Gaza over the last 70 years is disingenuous.
Gaza is the world’s largest open-air prison and Israel controls all resources, food and water that goes into and comes out of this small area. When the article says that casualties are on both sides, it fails to acknowledge that tens of thousands of Palestinian lives have been displaced over the last century by settler colonialism of the apartheid regime of Israel.
These people have been systematically kicked out of their homes and the entire global community has abandoned them in their plight.
Syed Hussain
Hayward
Palestinians have
rejected peace offers
In 1948, Arabs and Jews were offered separate states. Jews accepted. The Arabs rejected the offer and declared war instead.
In 1967, Israel repelled an impending invasion by the surrounding Arab countries. In exchange for peace, Israel offered to return conquered territory to Arabs. Again, the Arabs rejected peace and a chance for their own state.
At the 2000 Camp David Summit, PLO leader Arafat rejected an offer of a Palestinian state in exchange for peace. In 2005, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement was founded to create a world without a Jewish state. In 2005, Israel withdrew its forces from the Gaza Strip. To govern them, Gaza’s Palestinians elected Hamas, an Islamic terrorist group dedicated to wiping out the Jewish state.
History and Hamas’ recent terrorist barbarism make it clear that Palestinians seek to eliminate Israel. It’s time to stop pretending that Palestinians are victims of Jewish oppression.
Mark Cohen
Oakland
Source: www.mercurynews.com