Genocide on display

Philip Avnet (“Palestinians unacceptable,” Sept. 30) writes that “the Palestinians are unfit to take their place among the nations of the world,” because “genocide remains the official policy of the Palestinian government.” Two notions here are problematic.

Inasmuch as Israel and the United States destroyed the elected government of the Palestinian non-state a few years ago, Mr. Avnet is referencing the policy of the non-government of a non-state. Nor will Mr. Avnet be able to document that genocide is an official policy.

If genocide is to be measured by actual practice, however, it is easy for us to observe the actions of an existing state: Israel was established as an apartheid state in 1948 and has killed Palestinians in numbers greater many times over than the Israeli casualties due to Palestinian resistance.

Moreover, Israel has followed the classic structure of genocide identified by Raul Hilberg. First, it defined Palestinians out of the human community. Second, it expropriated their property and land. Third, it concentrated them into approximately 10 percent of their original homeland, not counting the squalid refugee camps of Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.

This is how the destruction of a human community proceeds. All that is left is the killing.

Wayne B. Kraft

Spokane