During the Nov. 7 elections, Somerville will become the battleground for Palestinian rights...

...The first question posed to voters by the SDP calls on [State Rep.] Provost to issue a statement on behalf of Massachusetts that would support the Right of Return for all refugees, including Palestinian refugees, to their land of return. The second question asks voters if they support government entities in Massachusetts divesting from Israeli bonds or in companies supplying military equipment to Israel.

Provost said that she would consult a private counsel to discuss her obligation if the voters support the measures, noting that she feels like she does not have enough authority to make decisions on Israeli and Palestinian relations...

...The ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their homelands is a fundamental injustice of the 20th century which must be dealt with sooner or later. Our country, which purports to stand for "freedom and justice for all" cannot continue to support the Israeli apartheid system of government which today has laws that deny basic rights based on race, and historically was built on the ethnic cleansing of one group for the benefit of another.

Ron Francis, one of my former teachers at Andover High School, attempted to place all of the blame for the Middle East conflict on the Jews of Israel in his recent letter to the editor of this newspaper. Francis claims to care about re-settling refugees, but not once in his letter did he mention the hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees who were forced out of Muslim countries in the late 1940's. Francis also frequently notes that Israel is a Jewish country, but he never mentions the fact that the Palestinians have officially adopted Islamic law as part of their constitution, or that Hamas, an Islamic fundamentalist party, is the ruling party of the Palestinians. These double standards, along with Francis' refusal to condemn Palestinian terrorism, illustrates Francis' tremendous bias against, and hatred for, Israel.

Additionally, potential Francis supporters in Somerville should know that Francis has made it very clear several times that he is working toward the goal of destroying Israel, and that he has often used anti-Semitic canards and language to promote this goal...

Notably missing from last week's long, one-sided account of the Arab refugee issue was the word "divestment," an interesting omission, given that the author is the discredited leader of the Somerville Divestment Project which has been trying for three years to drag the Middle East conflict into the city of Somerville.

Having failed to sneak divestment past the aldermen in 2004, and having refused to obey the law when trying to get onto the citywide ballot in 2005, the 2006 edition of their perennially losing campaign took advantage of lenient district requirements to get two questions: one on divestment, one on refugees (the so-called "Right of Return") onto the November ballot of a single district, the Middlesex 27...

...In the past few years, churches, universities and other institutions have rejected divestment by a large margin. In our own city, the Board of Alderman, Mayor Curtatone, and Somerville's state and federal congressional delegations have also been firmly against divestment. Is the failure of divestment the reason why SDP has decided to focus this year's campaign of deception on the so-called "right of return," hoping to introduce the most divisive, bloody issue in the entire Middle East conflict into the streets and squares of Somerville?

If divestment has been so soundly opposed, why does the SDP continue its campaigns? One need look no further than the SDP's own Web site to understand that they are motivated by an unmitigated hatred of Israel, a multiracial, multicultural democracy in a region of brutal dictatorships and autocracies. In regard to Gaza, where Israel unilaterally ended its occupation in hopes of furthering peace, SDP ludicrously claims that a genocide is occurring. While sane people have labeled Hamas a terrorist organization - and rightly so as they have intentionally killed more than 500 civilians including 27 Americans - SDP defends Hamas as being unfairly maligned by the media...