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Original Message -----
From: Ismail Zayid
To: Halifax Herald
Cc: Bev Dauphinee
Sent:
Subject: Stating the facts.
The Editor,
The
Dear
Editor:
Morris Givner [Letter June 6] and Daphne Caldwell [Letter June 7],
object to my letter of May 30, responding to a letter by Mark David, May
24, and calling my letter one-sided. Interestingly, they did not call Mr.
David's letter one-sided, though it contained a series of statements blaming
the victims with no hint of any criticism of Israeli policies, as I accurately
related. My statements on the Palestine/Israel conflict are consistently
stating the facts, and defy any challenge. There is in my letters
reference to the dispossession of the Palestinian people and their ethnic
cleansing from their homeland, as well as the violations of international law
and the Fourth Geneva Convention by Israel throughout its illegal occupation of
Palestinian land, that has been allowed to stand for 40 years in defiance of international
law and repeated Security Council resolutions. These Israeli practices are
regularly condemned by international human rights bodies including,
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the renowned Israeli human rights
organisation, B'Tselem. It behoves your correspondents to read the outstanding expose
of these Israeli crimes, as related by the Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe, in his recent book :"The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine."
In my
letters, I have always affirmed that the killing of innocent civilians, be that
by suicide bombers or Israeli B 52 bombers and Apache helicopters, as abhorent and criminal and must be condemned. It has been
always my hope that we, Muslims, Christaians
and Jews, will come to live together as equals in this Holy but
tortured land.
Finally, if
stating the facts is considered one-sided and biased, then welcome to more
one-sided contributors.
Yours
sincerely,