Dear Editor,

The move to pressure the university to divest from investments in Israel is a shallow, unjust, wrongheaded strategy that will never result in anything positive. Have you studied the history of the Middle East? The first Jewish temple was built in Jerusalem centuries before the birth of Jesus, and Jews have lived in that part of the world continuously since. Many Hebrews were forcibly removed from that area by the Romans, who sent them throughout the empire against their will. Israel is the only real democracy in the Middle East, and certainly America’s only true friend. Since the creation of their state by the wisdom and agreement of countries at the United Nation, Israelis have constantly fought wars simply to survive. They are not the aggressors in the Middle East. They seek only to maintain their own small piece of land — a place that is sacred to them — and to sustain the only Jewish state in the world.

How many Muslim countries are there in the world? How many Christian? How many Jewish? How is it that Palestinian terrorists — whose only goal is to destroy Israel and kill Jews — have a presumed right to land in that part of the world? How is it that Jews — who, along with their forbearers, have lived there for millennia — are denied the same right?

The Jews, in a few decades, have made the desert bloom with agricultural productivity, have maintained open religious shrines for those of every religion to enjoy and built a thriving country with blood and sweat that poured onto the dessert sand. Should they be damned and punished for defending their tiny piece of turf — and their very survival? This is horribly unjust. Divestment denies history, denies Jews the right to their only homeland and in the end, denies justice itself.

—Kirby Wohlander

UCLA alumnus, 1973