16 Oct. 2001

 

The Editor

The Globe & Mail

 

Dear Editor:

 

While I agree with  Ezra Levant's criticism of Kofi Anan's and the UN's role in Rwanda:[ "Kofi Annan is the last person to deserve the Nobel Peace Prize" Oct. 16}, I find his diatribe, against the UN and his defense of Israel's atrocious poicies, is biased and totally lacking in credibility.

 

In his attack against the Palestinian Intifada, is he aware that the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza have been under an illegal Israeli occupation for over 34 years in defiance of international law and repeated Security Council resolutions? They have been subjected to the most brutal oppression, including imprisonment without trial or charge, torture, extrajudicial execution, expropriation of their land and demolition of thousands of their homes, all in violation of The Fourth Geneva Convention, to which Israel is a signatory. Ironically, this convention was enacted in Dec. 1949 to prevent the recurrence of the Nazi crimes against Jewish and non- Jewish civilians. Is Mr. Levant aware that international law allows all peoples, including, even Arabs, to resist foreign occupation? We all supported the French resistance against Nazi occupation.

 

The "Hezbollah terrorists" as he calls them are the heroic  Lebanese resistance fighters who fought to drive out the illegal Israeli occupation of their land, which was allowed to stand for 22 years in defiance of Security Council resolutions. Their kidnapping of the Israeli soldiers from their occupied land is an attempt to rescue the scores of Lebanese prisoners, who have been held illegally for years, including Mustafa Dirani and Sheikh Obeid who were kidnapped from their homes by Israel. Mr. Levant has no word for these men or the thousands that were murdered in Israel's illegal invasion of Lebanon in 1982, under the direction of Ariel Sharon, or the numerous war crimes committed by Israel's leaders, Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, who, too, were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize..

 

He castigates the Durban Conference which was dedicated to identify and condemn racism. Israel's practice of blatant racism against its own Arab citizens is manifest and would require volumes to detail but I will let the late Professor Israel Shahak, a Holocaust survivor, who knew first hand what racism is, describe Israel's racism :

               " It is my considered opinion that the state of Israel is a racist state in the full meaning of this term. In this  

       state people are discriminated against, in the most permanent and legal way and in the most important areas

       of life, only because of their origin. This racist discrimination began in Zionism and is carried out today mainly in 

       cooperation with the institutions of the Zionist Movement" { " The Racist Nature of Zionism and of the Zionist State          

       of Israel" article published in Pi-Ha'aton, the student newspaper of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Nov. 5, 1975}.

 

What is most striking about the UN resolutions and Israel, is the UN inaction against Israeli defiance of these resolutions, because of the the US veto and its unquestioning support for Israel.

 

Yours sincerely

Ismail Zayid, MD