BDS bill supports Israel

I have read Kathleen McQuillen's article advocating for the BDS movement ('BDS bill is about freedom of speech,” April 5). She is playing right into the hands of those who would destroy the State of Israel.

Imagine that you lived in a country one seventh the size of Iowa surrounded by terrorist organizations and governments who seek your annihilation. Such is the predicament of Israel. To the north is Hezbollah, to the east the Assad regime, also to the east and south ISIS, and to the west Hamas. According to Ms. McQuillen, Israel commits human rights violations and war crimes when it defends itself against these ruthless cutthroats. But Israel must deal from a position of strength. One Holocaust is enough.

Ms. McQuillen refers to BDS as a human rights movement. False. BDS' slogan is 'from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” What do you think lies between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea: the State of Israel. BDS seeks the destruction of Israel. That is hardly non-violent.

Ms. McQuillen argues that BDS is about free speech. Since when is a boycott speech? In any case, BDS has access to the courts if it feels its rights have been abridged.

Ms. McQuillen implies that the daily maniacal Palestinian stabbings of Israelis are the moral equivalent of the Israelis' right of self-defense. Since when does someone attacked with lethal force not have the right to defend him or herself with lethal force? What are Israelis supposed to do, put their hands in their pockets while they're stabbed to death?

Ms. McQuillen refers to the unfortunate civilian deaths in the Gaza War in 2014. What she neglects to mention is that Israel gave the Gaza Strip back to the Palestinians before the war only to have Hamas launch thousands of rockets at Israeli cities from the very land that was relinquished. So much for 'land for peace.” Would you want America to sit on its hands under such an attack? Of course not. Neither can Israel afford to do so. It is reprehensible that Hamas chose to launch rockets from civilian areas, hospitals, schools, and mosques. Israel dropped thousands of leaflets warning the Palestinians to evacuate those areas before bombing. I viewed with my own eyes how Hamas thugs prevented the civilians from leaving those areas. Tragically, Hamas preferred the publicity from civilian casualties over protecting its people. But then that is the terrorist mind-set.

BDS was fashionable in Europe for a period of time. That was until the Europeans felt terrorism on their own skin. Today, in the wake of Paris and Brussels, those same Europeans who wanted to 'boycott, divest, and sanction” Israel are looking to Israel for advice on how to combat terrorism.

And Americans too are looking to Israel's example on how to get in front of the terrorists. Maybe not all Americans understood Israel's situation once, but on 911 every American learned what it felt like to be Israeli. And Americans have not forgotten. Thus Iowa's legislators, in Senate File 2281, are preventing further scapegoating of Israel, terrorism's principal victim. I applaud their effort.

' David Nadler is a lawyer in Cedar Rapids. He is a past president of the Iowa City Jewish Federation and a present member of the Iowa Holocaust Education Council.