April 2,
2003
The
Editor,
San Francisco
Chronicle
Dear
Editor,
In his article, (“A peacemaker with
a nom de guerre?” April 2) Jeff Jacoby indulges in a lengthy
diatribe accusing Palestinians of terrorism and describes the
West
Bank and the Gaza Strip as
“disputed territories”. International law and repeated
security council resolutions recognize that
Israel’s occupation of these
territories is illegal. This occupation has been allowed to
stand in defiance of international law for over 35 years. The
Palestinian people, under this occupation, have been subjected to violation of
their human rights, including torture, extrajudicial assassination, demolition
of thousands of their homes, and expropriation of their property for the
creation of illegal settlements. These practices are in
violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which are tantamount to war
crimes.
As to terrorism, it is the state of
Israel
that has created terrorism in the Middle
East. The late Professor Israel
Shahak, a Holocaust survivor, and then Chairman of
Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights,
stated: " There is nothing new in the fact that
Israel is a terrorist state, which, almost from its inception, has used its
intelligence service [the Mossad] to assassinate people on foreign soil with any
violence or terror it considers necessary for its ends."
Mr. Jacoby states that the territories were “occupied in
self-defense in 1967”. This clearly contradicts the testimony
of
Israel’s
leaders, at the time, who stated:
General Yitzhak
Rabin,
Israel's Chief
of Staff at the time, stated: " I do not think Nasser
wanted war. The two divisions he sent to The Sinai would not have been
sufficient to launch an offensive war. He knew it and we knew it" {Le
Monde, Feb.
28, 1968}.
Mr. Menachem Begin, when
he was Prime Minister, addressing Israel's National Defense College, on Aug. 8,
1982, stated :" in June 1967, we again had a choice. The Egyptian army
concentrations in The Sinai did not prove that Nasser was
really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to
attack him" { The New York Times,
Aug. 21, 1982}.
This
tells it all, as to who planned and committed this war of aggression in 1967. I
believe your readers are entitled and deserve to know the
facts.
Yours sincerely,
Ismail Zayid,
MD