Your May 29 editorial on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress repeats some of the myths of Middle Eastern history and politics (“Netanyahu defines the real Mideast conflict”).

About 1967: Israel, not its neighbors, started the Six-Day War. By international law, an aggressor nation can’t take land by force. Israeli governments having established, however illegally, their occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, they are forbidden by the Geneva Conventions to settle these lands with their own people. They are obliged to provide for the welfare of those occupied, not to bulldoze homes or build walls around villages in ways accurate maps show are not justified by “security needs.”

About recognition: With the 1993 Oslo Accords, the Palestinians formally accepted the state of Israel, and that’s been the underpinning of all peace talks since.

About vulnerability: Israel is one of the strongest countries on earth, with a nuclear arsenal. It receives over $3 billion annually from the United States.

About President Obama’s “taking the side of Israel’s most threatening enemy”: Are the Israeli academics and retired security personnel who have urged upon Mr. Netanyahu proposals similar to those suggested by Mr. Obama also in league with the “enemy”?

An unfortunate result of Mr. Netanyahu’s speech and your defense of it is that they continue adversarial thinking based on tired rhetoric. Many families and citizens of both peoples want an end to it. They want a flourishing Israel to exist alongside a flourishing Palestine. And that’s where they want to live their lives.