Letter to the Editor of the Berkshire Eagle October 2014
Mr.
Tobias presents the Israel/Palestinian case as if both parties are equal, equal
in power, equal in capabilities, portraying the Palestinians as vicious enemies
who hate Jews and constantly and unjustly attack their neighbor Israel - which
wants nothing but peace.
Both parties are wildly unequal – Israel with hundreds (or even thousands) of nuclear bombs, a large well-equipped army, $8 million dollars in aid PER DAY from its friend, the USA, and in virtual possession of not only the land which the UN allotted to it with the partition plan (undersigned and agreed to by the Jewish representatives in 1947), but also the land which they overran right after the signing and cleansed of the indigenous Arabs who had lived in it for generations.
After the State of Israel was founded in 1948, it incorporated 20% non-Jews, all one of them second-class citizens, distinctly separate in rights, education, opportunities, unable to live in Jewish towns, but also unable to keep Jews from moving into theirs . An Apartheid state, if there ever was one.
In 1967 and in the face of the growing resentment against them, Israel conquered what was supposed to become the Palestinian state of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. And from then on there was another picture: hundreds of thousands of Palestinians driven from their land, confined in concentration camps (only now they are called refugee camps), their land taken away, their dignity and hope destroyed, their land invaded by 121 Jewish settlements with 800,000 Jewish settlers, their roads carrying road blocks, while the settler-only roads soar through the landscape and connect each settlement to Israel proper. All of this illegal, all of this condemned by most countries in the world.
Remember that Ehud Barak once said on Israeli TV (date undetermined, but confirmed by former Israeli Knesset Member Marsha Friedman): "If I were a Palestinian, I would be a terrorist."
Can you understand their resentment? What would you do if you were Palestinian?
My own question is: how can the children of the holocaust who suffered dislocation and unspeakable cruelties at the hands of the Nazis and should know better, get their own State and condemn other people, humans living in the country of their birth and heritage, to dislocation and unspeakable cruelties themselves.
Inge Etzbach
Both parties are wildly unequal – Israel with hundreds (or even thousands) of nuclear bombs, a large well-equipped army, $8 million dollars in aid PER DAY from its friend, the USA, and in virtual possession of not only the land which the UN allotted to it with the partition plan (undersigned and agreed to by the Jewish representatives in 1947), but also the land which they overran right after the signing and cleansed of the indigenous Arabs who had lived in it for generations.
After the State of Israel was founded in 1948, it incorporated 20% non-Jews, all one of them second-class citizens, distinctly separate in rights, education, opportunities, unable to live in Jewish towns, but also unable to keep Jews from moving into theirs . An Apartheid state, if there ever was one.
In 1967 and in the face of the growing resentment against them, Israel conquered what was supposed to become the Palestinian state of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. And from then on there was another picture: hundreds of thousands of Palestinians driven from their land, confined in concentration camps (only now they are called refugee camps), their land taken away, their dignity and hope destroyed, their land invaded by 121 Jewish settlements with 800,000 Jewish settlers, their roads carrying road blocks, while the settler-only roads soar through the landscape and connect each settlement to Israel proper. All of this illegal, all of this condemned by most countries in the world.
Remember that Ehud Barak once said on Israeli TV (date undetermined, but confirmed by former Israeli Knesset Member Marsha Friedman): "If I were a Palestinian, I would be a terrorist."
Can you understand their resentment? What would you do if you were Palestinian?
My own question is: how can the children of the holocaust who suffered dislocation and unspeakable cruelties at the hands of the Nazis and should know better, get their own State and condemn other people, humans living in the country of their birth and heritage, to dislocation and unspeakable cruelties themselves.
Inge Etzbach