Letters to the Editor: Palestinians' ‘right to self-determination' needs to be considered too

Los Angeles Times

23-07-2025

To the editor: Guest contributor Mark Brilliant makes his opinions clear but fails to convince ('Anti-Zionism is antisemitism — university leaders settle the question,' July 21). His assertion regarding the House testimony ignores how the Trump administration has punished students and researchers at schools that failed to toe its line.
Brilliant claims anti-Zionism is 'denying to the Jewish people the right to self-determination.' Here is the question he should ask: Is Zionism a denial of the Palestinians' right to self-determination? Further, were the Palestinian people treated fairly by the partition of their land?
Should we continue to support Israel's 70 years of gradual seizure of more Palestinian land in the West Bank, its intention in the long run to prevent the Palestinians from ever having a state of their own and the violence that has ensued as both side's extremists fight for their 'rights'?
Is the revulsion many of us feel about how Israel is slaughtering civilians in Gaza 'anti-Zionism' or human decency? Few Americans question Israel's right to exist, but many question the senseless violence of its government in response to the senseless violence of Hamas.
Michael Snare, San Diego
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To the editor: Brilliant takes an affirmative response to a gotcha question ('Is denying the Jewish people their rights to self-determination … antisemitism? Yes or no?') and leaps to his desired conclusion: that the university officials agreed that anti-Zionism is antisemitic. But he is wrong when he says that the Jewish right to self-determination is the textbook definition of Zionism. In fact, Zionism is the movement to establish a Jewish state in biblical Israel.
I believe everyone has a right to self-determination, so I might have answered the gotcha question affirmatively too. But no one has the 'right' to occupy land where others live just as no one has a right to seize homes and orchards, to tell people where they must live and that they can't leave or to deny others their right to self-determination by basing democratic rights such as the right to vote or the right to travel on one's ethnicity. And, of course, no one has a 'right' to bomb hospitals and starve children. It is not antisemitic of me to say so.
Clyde Leland, Berkeley
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To the editor: In response to Brilliant's op-ed that equates anti-Zionism with antisemitism, I would like to point out that people who criticize Zionism probably don't object to Jewish rights to self-determination or statehood. The problem is real estate. The Bible may have promised the land of Israel to the Jews, but if you look at things from a strictly historical perspective, a lot more non-Jews have lived on the land in question than Jews. Many of the people who established the state of Israel came from Europe (for admittedly good reasons) and pushed the native Arab population into refugee camps where it's lived for the last 70-odd years.
Now government officials in Israel and the U.S. are talking openly about completely removing this population. That's ethnic cleansing, and as uncomfortable as it is for many to admit, it's hard to see that ethnic cleansing is not intrinsic to Zionism. You can't establish a Jewish state in a place where other people already live without kicking those people out. That's what people don't like about Zionism. If you could take away the mandatory Arab eviction part, I don't think anybody would have a problem with it.
William Griffith, Oxnard