letter to the editor
Frederick Nagel
People have a right to exist, but the counties they live in do not. Should a country betray all measures of law or humanity, why their leaders should be arrested and all its institutional structures erased.
We have the Nuremberg and Tokyo Trials as a template. At the end of the Second World War, the victors decided to remake Germany and Japan by locking up their former leaders and shredding their social structures. These weren't perfect trials, but they did create an expectation that such horrendous war crimes would never be allowed again.
Two million people are being starved to death in Gaza. There are no hospitals, schools, or
So when Israel falls because the rest of the world finally cuts it off, we know who should go to jail and what societal structures should be destroyed. Racial apartheid must come to an end, as should all the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian land. Israel, that failed colony of Western imperialism and racism, must cease to be a state.
Fred Nagel
SF
Fred,
I have read your letter with great interest.
You begin with the assertion that people have a right to exist, but countries do not. History indeed shows that states can disappear, be transformed, or lose legitimacy. Yet history also shows that the destruction of states rarely produces justice. More often, it produces chaos, suffering, and new cycles of violence.
You invoke the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials. Those tribunals did not seek the destruction of the German or Japanese people. Their purpose was individual accountability under law. They distinguished between governments, military leaders, institutions, and entire populations. The lesson of Nuremberg was not collective punishment, but the opposite: that responsibility belongs to individuals who commit crimes.
Your conclusion that Israel "must cease to be a state" raises a difficult question. More than nine million people live in Israel, including Jews, Arabs, Druze, Christians, and others. What political future do you envision for them? If self-determination is a right for Palestinians, why should it be denied to Israelis?
You describe Israel as a colonial and racist project, yet omit a significant part of the region's modern history. For decades, the Soviet Union armed and financed Arab states that openly declared their intention to destroy Israel. Soviet weapons flowed to Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and other regimes during repeated wars against the Jewish state. Were these humanitarian efforts, or were they attempts to achieve through military force what could not be achieved through diplomacy?
You also overlook the role Soviet and later Russian propaganda played in spreading anti-Zionist and often antisemitic narratives throughout the Middle East. The infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a fabricated antisemitic forgery originating in Tsarist Russia, was translated, republished, and widely circulated across the Arab world. The result was not reconciliation but the cultivation of suspicion, hatred, and conspiracy theories about Jews.
Likewise, generations of Palestinian children have too often been exposed to educational materials that present distorted history, demonize Israelis, glorify violence, or deny Jewish historical connections to the land. Peace cannot be built on incitement, just as it cannot be built on hatred. If we are concerned about justice and human rights, we must be willing to examine all sources of intolerance, not only those that fit our preferred political narrative.
I support vigorous debate about Israeli and Palestinian policies, the terror, the conduct of the war in Gaza, Palestinian and Israeli rights, and the urgent need for peace. These are legitimate subjects for criticism and discussion. But calling for the elimination of a state, rather than reform, reconciliation, or coexistence, moves beyond criticism and into advocacy for the dissolution of an entire national framework.
The future of both Israelis and Palestinians will ultimately depend not on the disappearance of one people or one state, but on the rejection of hatred, historical distortions, and maximalist ambitions on all sides. A durable peace will require mutual recognition, accountability, and the acceptance that both peoples have legitimate national aspirations.