Danielle Shroyer

ALT This is a war of choice. The horror of the attacks on 7 October did not and do not merit bombing Gaza into the Stone Age. The horror of the attacks on 7 October did not and do not merit invading Lebanon. In this country we have seen "the right to self-defense" used as an excuse to murder black women, children and men. Israel has the right to exist and the right to defend itself. It does not have the right to exterminate Arab populations on its contested borders or, to seize their land. If there is to be peace between the state of Israel and the surrounding nation states, there must be a self governing Palestinian state with contiguous borders. Some of that land will have to come from what is now claimed by Israel, including but not necessarily limited to the land under illegal settlements. And while the state of Israel is an established reality that is not going anywhere, the nature of its founding and the method of its founding must be revisited in something like a truth and reconci