Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2002 12:28 AM
Subject: Occupation is violence.
March 27, 2002
The Editor,
The Halifax Herald
Dear
Editor:
Occupation is Violence
Your editorial {"Help wanted" March 26} is laden with
falsehoods and confusion.
You state: " It is not helpful for Palestinian negotiators to
insist on the right of return of Palestinian refugees." The Right of
Return is a fundamental principle of the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights and repeated UN resolutions. This is an
individual right, that cannot be waived by Palestinian or
Israeli negotiators. It is also of fundamental importance to understand
that the plight of the refugees is not merely the outcome of "Arab-Israeli wars"
but a direct outcome of a deliberate Zionist and Israeli policy of
systematic expulsion and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian
people from their homeland. This policy was orchestrated
by Theodor Herzl who stated, in 1896 : " We must spirit the penniless [Arab]
population across the border... the process must be carried out discreetly and
circumspectly." Ben Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, wrote to his
son, Amos, in 1937 that when the Jewish state comes into being, " We will expel
the Arabs and take their places." Before a single Arab soldier entered Palestine
on May 15,1948, the Zionist forces had committed many massacres and expelled
350,000 refugees. This policy of expulsion is still an open policy of the
Moledet party, a member of the current Sharon cooalition government. In
answer to the Israeli tales about the plight of the refugees, the Israeli
thinker, Nathan Chofshi, stated: " If Rabbi Kaplan really
wanted to know what happened, we old settlers in Palestine, who witnessed the
flight, could tell him how and in what manner we, Jews, forced the Arabs to
leave their cities and villages... We came and turned the Arabs into tragic
refugees. And we still dare to slander and malign them, and to besmirch their
name. Instead of being ashamed of what we did and of trying to undo some of the
evil we committed, by helping these unfortunate refugees, we justify our
terrible acts and even attempt to glorify them."
The statement, about "conveniently ignoring the plight of the
500,000 Jews forced to flee their homes in Arab countries", is baseless. In 1950
and 1951, when Iraqi Jews were unwilling to answer Israeli calls for emigration,
secret agents were sent to intimidate Jews to emigrate. Mordechai Ben
Porat , an Iraqi born Israeli politician, boasted, years later, of his
role in tossing hand grenades in Massauda-Shem -Tov
synagogue causing numerous deaths and injuries, so as to blame it
on the Arabs and encourage Iraqi Jews to flee to Israel.
This policy of creating self-manufactured anti-semitism was
reiterated by Sharun, a member of the governing Mapai Party in Israel
who stated ,as reported by Kemper, a Jewish paper, published in New York, July,
11,1952: " I shall not be ashamed to confess that, if I had the power, as I have
the will, I would select a score of efficient young men,
intelligent, decent and burning with the desire to help redeem Jews, and I
would send them to the countries where Jews are absorbed in sinful
self-satisfaction, and plague these Jews with anti-semitic slogans, such as
"Bloody Jews, Jews go to Israel" and similar intimacies. I can vouch that the
results, in terms of a considerable immigration to Israel from these countries,
would be ten thousand times larger than the results brought by thousands of
emissaries who have been preaching for decades to deaf ears."
Furthermore, Jews throughout history received considerable
tolerance in the Muslim and Arab world. There is no better testimony than that
made by Chaim Weizmann, Israel's first
president, who stated in a testimony before the
Anglo-American Commission, in Jerusalem in 1946 : " I would not like to do any
injustice. The Muslim world has treated the Jews with considerable tolerance.
The Ottoman Empire [ of which the Arabs were a major part] received the Jews
with open arms, when they were driven out of Spain and Europe, and the Jews
should never forget that." Unfortunately, many of them choose to
forget..
You accuse the UN of falsely charging Israel of racism. The
facts speak for themselves, and I will let Israeli human rights workers and
thinkers, amongst others, describe Israeli practices against Muslim and
Christian citizens of the state of Israel. The late Professor Israel
Shahak, a Holocaust survivor and Chairperson of the Israeli
League for Civil and Human Rights, stated: " 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." 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."
Finally and In essence, if we are to achieve peace and
security for Palestinians and Israelis and stop the abhorent killing of innocent
civilians on both sides, it is incumbent on our political and media leaders to
face the facts and stop making excuses for Israeli policies and call on Israel
to end its illegal oppressive occupation and comply with
international law.
Yours sincerely,
Ismail Zayid, M.D.
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