From: Ismail Zayid [mailto:izayid@eastlink

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----- Original Message -----

From: Ismail Zayid

To: Halifax Herald

Cc: Laurent Le Pierres ; Bev Dauphinee

Sent: Sunday, August 10, 2008 1:35 PM

Subject: A just Cause.

The Editor,

The Halifax Herald.

Dear Editor:

Dave Burris makes, in his letter Aug. 8, incredible statements. He states: "I wonder why some are motivated to take up the Palestinian cause." The answer to that is very simple. Their cause is Just. The Palestinian people, as documented by many Israeli historians, including Ilan Pappe in his recent book, "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine", were expelled from their native land by by Israel. Over 750,000 Palestinians were driven out or fled in 1947/1948 and 531 Palestinian towns and villages were demolished. Mr. Burris makes the extraordinary statement that " The Israelis certainly occupy the moral high ground." The statement by the noted British historian, Professor Arnold Toynbee, can perhaps answer that. In 1961, in a lecture at McGill University, Professor Toynbee told his largely Jewish audience: "The Jewish treatment of the Arabs in 1947 was as morally indefensible as the slaughter by the Nazis of six million Jews....The most tragic thing in human life is when people who have suffered impose suffering in their turn."

In June 1967 Israel, in a war of naked aggression, invaded and occupied Egyptian Sinai, the Syrian Golan Heights and the remaining Palestinian territories and drove out another 350.000 Palestinian refugees and systematically demolished the villages of Imaws, Yalu and Beit Nuba [my own hometown.] To this day, 41 years later, Israel is maintaining its illegal occupation of the Palestinian and Syrian territories, in defiance of international law and repeated Security Council resolutions. Throughout this occupation of Palestinian territories, Israeli practices include extra-judicial assassination, detention of thousands without charge or trial, torture, daily humiliation at over 500 checkpoints, demolition of thousands of homes and expropriation of land for the creation of illegal colonies [settlements]. All these practices are in violation of virtually every article of the Fourth Geneva Convention and are defined, by international law, as war crimes, and have been condemned by all international human rights groups including Amnesty international and Human Rights Watch, as well as Israeli human rights organisation, B'Tselem.

Is this the high moral ground that Mr. Burris advocates?

Yours sincerely,

Ismail Zayid, MD.

The Chronicle-Herald, Fri 8 August 2008, Page A9
http://www.thechronicleherald.ca/Search/1071997.html

Puzzling cause

Re: the recent letters commenting on the Middle East situation. I wonder why some are motivated to take up the Palestinian cause, although I understand Dr. Ismail Zayid’s view since he says that he and his family were evicted from their home in Israel during the 1948 war.

I don’t agree with his arguments, but I can appreciate his position. For those who have no personal stake, then, what is their motivation? After all, it is not the Israelis who send suicide bombers, or indiscriminately rain down rockets on Palestinian towns and villages. But that is what the Palestinians have been doing to the Israelis for decades now.

The Israelis certainly occupy the moral high ground. Perhaps those on the other side are just honing their debating skills to demonstrate how well they can defend the indefensible, or perhaps they just want to see the reaction from the Israeli side, or maybe it is the obvious: they actually believe their own rhetoric.

Dave Burris, Beaver Bank