To the Editor:

Re “A Look at the International Drive to Boycott Israel” (news article, July 28):

Thanks to The Times for publishing this largely evenhanded account of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. B.D.S. is working: Exhibit A is the massive investment by the Israeli government in seeking to combat it, and Exhibit B is this full-page article in The Times.

Israel’s claim to be a vibrant democracy is incompatible with its disenfranchisement of millions of Palestinians, and the B.D.S. movement makes that hypocrisy impossible to ignore. I support the B.D.S. movement as an American Jew because it reflects the essence of Judaism. We are taught that Hillel, when asked to explain Judaism while standing on one foot, said: “ What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary .”

Jethro Eisenstein

New York

The writer is a former chairman of the national board of Jewish Voice for Peace.

To the Editor:

Re “Does Anyone Take B.D.S. Seriously?,” by Eric Alterman (Op-Ed, July 30):

The problem with B.D.S. is that it is being used as a cudgel to demonstrate either one’s pro-Israel or progressive bona fides rather than as a means to solving an intractable conflict. Were it truly being used as a means to solve the conflict, it would recognize: 1) Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish homeland with secure borders; 2) that both sides have a claim on Jerusalem that must be shared and/or divided loosely based on population; and 3) that Israel can no more take in the millions of refugees who claim to be descendants of the 700,000 or so Palestinians who once lived there than the Arab countries can accept the roughly same number of Jews who were expelled or fled into Israel in 1948.