Sent: Monday, August 06, 2001 10:07
PM
Subject: Hypocrisy Indeed.
The Editor,
The Halifax Herald
Aug. 6, 2001
Dear Editor:
Your editorial { "Swimming in blood and
hypocrisy" Aug. 6} is laden with bias, distortion of information and a
measure of hypocrisy. Your justification for Israel's extrajudicial assasination
of Palestinians is a validation of Ariel Sharon, who is notorious for his war
crimes and the killing of thousands of Palestinians, as the accuser, the judge
and the executioner. Your editorial makes no mention of the fact that the
Palestinians are under an illegal Israeli occupation that has
been allowed to stand for over 34 years, in defiance of international law and
repeated Security Council resolutions. They have been subjected to humiliation,
torture, collective punishment, expropriation of their land and demolition of
thousands of their homes , all in violation of the Fourth Geneva
Convention and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Perhaps it is relevant to remind you that
international law entitles people under foreign occupation to resist this
occupation. Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz, who was professor of neurophysiology
at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, sums that up well when he wrote, in
discussing the struggle of the Palestinian people against Israeli occupation:
" That a subjugated people would fight for its
freedom against the conquering ruler, with all the means at its disposal,
without being squeamish about their legitimacy, was only to be expected. This
has been true of the wars of liberation of all peoples. We call the acts of the
Palestinians 'terrorism' and their fighters 'terrorists'. But we are able to
maintain our rule over the rebellious people only by actions regarded the world
over as criminal. We refer to this as 'policy' rather than 'terror', because it
is conducted by a duly constituted government and its regular army...... Only by
putting an end to our rule over the other people can we be saved from the dire
consequences of persisting in the present policy. If the present situation
continues, the growing savagery of Israeli society will be as inevitable as the
severance of the state from the Jews of the world...Already today, the state of
Israel, to which most of the world's nations were once sympathetic, has earned
contempt and hatred throughout the world...Above all, the state, which was to
have been the pride and glory of the Jewish people, is rapidly becoming an
embarrassment to it ".
You accuse the U.S of hypocrisy. There, you are
right, but not because of its lame criticism of Israeli extrajudicial
assasination, but because of its continuing to supply Israel with the bullets,
the rockets and the dollars that allow Israel to maintain its aggression and
illegal occupation of Arab land.
You refer to Hamas activists passing out candy at a
mosque. There is no mention of the real religious bigotry and racism manifested
in the statement by Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the spiritual leader of the Shas party
and former Israeli Chief Rabbi, in his Passover Sermon at a synagogue when he
stated: " The Lord shall waste their [the Arabs]seed,devastate them and
vanish them from this world. It is forbidden to be merciful to them. You must
send missiles to them and annihilate them. They are evil and damnable". Mr.
Sharon is evidently in compliance with this sermon...
I think it behooves the editorial staff of
The Herald to look at the facts with a measure of
fairness, so as not to mislead their readers. It is time to call for immediate
and complete Israeli withdrawal from occupied territory. This is the only way to
put an end to the abhorent killing of both Palestinians and
Israelis.
Yours sincerely
Ismail Zayid, MD.