Sent: Thursday, May 26, 2005 2:53 PM
Subject: Thank you.
Canada Palestine Association,
P.O.Box 1085,
Halifax, NS, B3J 2X1
May 26, 2005
Ms. Colleen Beaumier, M.P.
House of Commons,
Ottawa.
Dear Ms. Beaumier:
Thank you for your forthright and principled letter
to Mr. Bill Graham, our Minister of National Defence, in reference to the
incredible invitation by our government to the Israeli Air
Force to participate in the Maple Leaf
Excercise.
Our government claims to uphold international law
and human rights, yet this invitation is a legitimization of the
oppresive abhorent Israeli policies, which stand in defiance of international
law and repeated Security Council resolutions, and have been condemned
repeatedly by international and Israeli human rights groups. The Israeli
Air Force is regularly committing war crimes in its practices of extra-judicial
assassinations and demolition of Palestinian homes and the killing of innocent
men, women and children, not to mention its repeated wars of aggression against
neighbouring Arab countries.
I come from a Palestinian village, Beit
Nuba, which was systematically dynamited and bulldozed, together
with the neighbouring villages of Imwas [Emmaus] and Yalu,
by the Israeli army, in June 1967. At the site of
these villages stands today, to our shame as Canadians, the infamy
called "Canada Park", built by the Canadian Jewish
National Fund[JNF], with Canadian tax-deductible dollars.
Despite repeated protests, our government continues to allow our
dollars to participate in this war crime.
Thank you again for your integrity and
courage.
Yours sincerely,
Ismail Zayid, M.D.
President, Canada Palestine
Association.