Letter: No peace as long as there is injustice

Regarding David Nadler's April 22 guest column 'BDS bill supports Israel”:

Iowa has passed the BDS bill mentioned by Nadler.

BDS, or Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, are not new and have been used many times to express concern over social injustice. The Jewish community has been an advocate of human rights for years supporting civil rights during the 1960s, migrant farmworkers in California, anti-apartheid in South Africa, all used boycotts and divestment. Human rights issues - care for the widows and orphans, prisoners and unjustly treated - are a major tenet of Judaism.

The current BDS issue is not anti-Israel, but aimed at corporations that unfairly treat the Palestinians by paying low wages and restricting access to jobs, school and medical care. It focuses on businesses in Israeli settlements in the West Bank built on lands confiscated from Palestinian farmers and landowners. BDS began in 2005, following the International Court of Justice ruled regarding the illegality of Israel's wall on Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT).

It calls on Israel to meet its obligations under international law to give equal rights to Palestinians and Arab-Palestinian Israelis. Corporations with production in the illegal settlements in the OPT, those affiliated with checkpoints, prisons, the siege of Gaza and other human rights abuses are the focus of the actions.

There can be no peace as long as there is injustice. Whether Israeli, Palestinian, American, whatever ethnicity, religion, race, social stratum, we are all interdependent and must learn to live together.

Margaret Kiekhaefer

Coralville