Letter to the editor: Summer Lee's stance on Israel

Rep. Summer Lee is taking heat for voting against congressional resolutions supporting Israel (“Pittsburgh rabbis urge Rep. Summer Lee to take stand against Hamas, terrorism,” Oct. 31, TribLIVE).

On the same day, the Trib printed Lee’s response to abusive graffiti in her district (“Police step up patrols after antisemitic graffiti scrawled in Squirrel Hill,” Oct. 31, TribLIVE): “The vandalism and antisemitic targeting of a Jewish community member’s property … is completely unacceptable and wrong. I condemn these actions in the strongest possible terms.”

Was Lee trying to have it both ways? Not at all.

Israel has the right, indeed the responsibility, to fight back against terrorism. Does that license Israel violating the laws of warfare, since Hamas did so first? Absolutely not, even given that Hamas is a nonstate actor with no legitimate resort to violence.

Both just war theory and the international law of war allow for the possibility that both sides are wrong. Neither party can legitimately claim, “Our enemy is wrong, therefore we’re automatically right.” Perhaps Lee thought the resolutions echoed such claims.

The article “U.S. Rep. Summer Lee votes against pro-Israel resolution on Hamas attack” (Oct. 26, TribLIVE) stated, “The resolution is nonbinding and largely a symbolic gesture that states the U.S. ‘stands with Israel as it defends itself against the barbaric war launched by Hamas and other terrorists’.” Maybe Lee favors material support to innocent Israeli civilians — but also innocent Palestinians in Gaza — rather than symbolic support to a government.

Eugene V. Torisky Jr.

Latrobe