From: Ismail Zayid
To: The Halifax Herald

Sent: Sunday, January 14, 2001 12:07 AM

Subject: Zionist Propaganda and Lies

 

Arab Canadian Association of the Atlantic Provinces,
P.O.Box, 1024,
Halifax, NS, B3J 2X1
Tel: 429 9100

The Editor.
The Halifax Herald.

Jan. 13, 2001

Dear Editor:

Thomas Friedman, in his article {"Serious soul-searching time down on the ‘Arab street’, Jan. 13}, exhibits nothing but bias and ignorance.

He asks why don’t the Palestinians accept " 95% of what they want?" Assuming they are actually being offered that, and they are not, has it occurred to him to ask his Israeli friends why don’t they comply with international law and Security Council resolutions and withdraw completely from territory they have illegally occupied for 33 years, which constitutes only 22% of historic Palestine? Why does he not ask his friend President Clinton why would not his government insist on the implementation of international law and Security Council resolutions? Was the American government willing to ask Kuwait to accept Iraqi withdrawal from 95% of their illegally occupied land?

His attack on Palestinian and Arab drive for education is baseless. The Palestinians’ and Arabs’ thirst and demand for education is well known and documented. Even the children of the refugees, that his Zionist friends systematically cleansed from their land, strive for and achieve, even in their refugee camps, the highest standards of higher education, and provide a great deal in their fields to North American society. His attack on Arab society is strange. There are no homeless people in the streets of Amman, Nablus, Damascus or Riyadh, contrasted with the hundreds of thousands in the streets of New York and Washington.

He speaks of "the Arab elites supporting Saddam Hussein..... and the Poison gas he has used on his own people, the generation of Iraqis he has destroyed". This is truly the highest form of hypocrisy and duplicity. If he would read American records, he would find who supported and sustained Saddam in his rule and who provided him with the poisonous gas that he used against Iraqi Kurds and Iranians. Why did his American government not only remain silent when he invaded Iran but actually supplied him with the arms to wage that war of aggression? It is the height of audacity for him to talk of the generations of Iraqis destroyed. Has he heard of who waged a war of massive bombing destroying the entire infrastructure of Iraq including water and sewage facilities? Has he heard of the million depleted uranium [DU] missiles on Iraqi cities and towns, causing a horrendous incidence of leukemia, cancer and congenital malformations in Iraqi children, as documented by UN and international observers? Is he aware that the sanctions, that the US and Britain are maintaining against the Iraqi people, that have caused 1.5 million deaths in Iraq during the last 10 years, and the death of 5000 children every month? Did he ask Mr. Denis Halliday and his successor, Mr. Hans von Sponeck, the UN humanitarian Coordinators for Iraq, why they resigned in disgust at these actions by the US, which they, together with the former US Attorney General, Ramsey Clark, called genocide and war crimes?

I think it is time that some form of honesty is called for in journalism, and I think the readers of The Halifax Herald deserve a little more respect in the choice of columnists they are subjected to.

Yours sincerely

Ismail Zayid,MD
President, Arab Canadian Assoc. of the Atlantic Provinces