To The Daily Sun,
I am responding to Steve Earle’s “Hamas is Founded on Destroying Israel.”
Mr. Earle needs to become better informed about Israel’s role concerning its 15-year siege of Gaza. We hear many Israeli and American politicians say over and over – “Palestinians are terrorists” and Hamas is a “terrorist organization.” Earle’s letter is a mishmash of distortions, false statements, and Israeli propaganda.
Terrorism has many forms. If one includes overwhelming military assaults on a defenseless civilian population, then Israelis are guilty of terrorism. Hamas has no army, no air force, no tanks, no artillery, no precision guided missiles. And it is the de facto representative of the people of Gaza.
One makes peace by negotiating with his enemies. Refusing to negotiate keeps open the possibility for Israel to grab more Palestinian land.
Hamas, several years ago, agreed to a 10-year truce. Israel rejected that. Israel has never been an advocate for peace. Its goal from the very beginning was for removal of “Arabs” so that it would eventually control all the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River and even beyond the Jordan. Israel is the only country in the world which has never stated its own boundaries.
Earle says the “root cause” of all the problems in Gaza is all Hamas’ fault. If one listens to U.S. corporate media, they seldom, if ever, provide any meaningful context to Hamas. Remember, under international law, an occupied population has a legal right to resist its military occupiers.
Palestinians I know say the major obstacle to a just peace is the occupation. The theft of Palestinian land by Jewish “settlers” who claim land belonging to Palestinians, leads to settlers attacking Palestinians, burning their olive trees, stealing their water, poisoning their animals. Despite all these human rights violations, the land-stealing settlers are not only protected, but even encouraged by Israel to build on such stolen land.
Palestinians want to be treated as human beings who seek to live on their land without having to go through checkpoints that dehumanize them and treat them as the “other.”
Israeli Jews, of all people, should recognize the plight of the oppressed. Is not one of the lessons of the Holocaust that no matter how difficult, one must “speak truth to power?”
William Thomas
Auburn
(2) comments
Excellent letter. My sentuments exactly.
The Palestinians could help their cause a lot by talking about peace instead of trying to kill people with thousands of rockets.
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