June 29, 2006
The Editor,
The Globe & Mail.
Dear Editor:
Margaret Wente, in her article attacking the United
Church and CUPE, {"The shame of the United Church" June 29}, evades the
facts of Israeli racist practices. These
practices are not restricted to the Palestinians under its brutal and oppressive
occupation but extend to Muslim and Christian Arab citizens of Israel.
These racist practices are many and varied and are embedded in Israeli
laws. The recent law denying its Arab citizens the right to be able to live
with their spouses in their homes, if they marry Palestinians from the Occupied
Territories or abroad, is a clear example of legislated
racism.
The late Professor Israel Shahak, a
Holocaust survivor and Chairperson of the Israeli League for Human and
Civil Rights, sums it up accurately in
his statement: " 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 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 weekly newspaper of the students of the
Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Nov.5, 1975}.
Derek Tozer, an Israeli
thinker, stated : " The official policy of the government[of Israel] is
unequivocal. Arabs,like the Jews in Nazi Germany, are officially 'class B'
citizens, a fact which is recorded on their identity cards."
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, during a
Christmas visit to Jerusalem in 1989, stated: " I am a black South
African, and if I were to change names, a description of what is happening in
the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, could describe events in South
Africa."
Yours sincerely,
Ismail Zayid, MD.