ON the subject of Israel and Gaza, I came across an interesting take from Norman Finkelstein, a Jewish-American political scientist whose parents were Holocaust survivors.
He was commenting on a speech by Israel’s President Herzog, who tried to justify Israel’s onslaught on the Gaza civilian population. He argued that the people of Gaza must be considered to support what Hamas did, because they had not risen up to overthrow them, and therefore the entire population can be treated as legitimate targets.
READ MORE: Humza Yousaf says UK complicit in Gaza deaths after UN abstention
Finkelstein pointed out that Israel has free elections (for Jews at least), a press free to be highly critical of the government (and in Haaretz, at least, it frequently is), and free speech. Nonetheless, in previous military “operations” into Gaza, 90% of the Israeli population were found to support the actions. On Herzog’s logic, the citizenry of Israel can all the more be held to support their government’s actions, and presumably be considered a legitimate target for acts like October 7. They enjoy advantages the Gazans do not.
Obviously Finkelstein strongly rejects this appalling line of thought, as I hope we all would, but it underlines the cynical hypocrisy of the Israeli position, and of our Western governments who uncritically support them.
In response to Tim Jones’s letter (Oct 23) on religious tolerance, I recently saw a clip of a traditional rabbi remarking that for centuries Jews and Muslims lived harmoniously side by side in the Middle East and North Africa, until the Zionist movement came to power and influence, with the racist ideology that informs the present Israeli government.
Finkelstein also distinguished between two responses to the Holocaust: those who said we must never again let this happen, and those who said we must never again let this happen to Jews. I think it is clear which of these responses the Zionists hold to.
Robert Moffat
Blanefield
WHEN are we going to listen to Amnesty International and join together with the UN Refugee Council, the EU, and every right-thinking person to STOP Israel committing WAR CRIMES? The attacks by Hamas were war crimes, nobody is denying that, but Israel has been committing war crimes in attacking civilian buildings, giving NO warning.
Amnesty has found evidence of war crimes as Israeli attacks wipe out entire families in Gaza. The organisation spoke to survivors and eyewitnesses, analysed satellite imagery and verified photos and videos to investigate air bombardments carried out by Israeli forces between October 7 and 12, which caused horrific destruction, and in some cases wiped out entire families. It has been reported that the Israelis have been using white phosphorous, which burns victims.
READ MORE: Humza Yousaf says family in Gaza have run out of clean drinking water
Israeli attacks violated international humanitarian law, including by failing to take feasible precautions to spare civilians, or by carrying out indiscriminate attacks that failed to distinguish between civilians and military objectives, or by carrying out attacks that may have been directed against civilian objects.
For 16 years, Israel’s illegal blockade has made Gaza the world’s biggest open-air prison – the international community must act now to prevent it becoming a giant graveyard. STOP THE KILLING NOW. There can be no peace unless it is a JUST peace. The war criminals must go before the International Criminal Court in The Hague, and that includes the Israeli war criminals.
Margaret Forbes
Blanefield
IN the 1990s I was sent to Bethlehem to broadcast a Christmas service. In order to gain the necessary permissions (withheld by the Israelis) we had to speak to the mayor of Bethlehem. He told us that he – the mayor, remember – had to suffer his water being cut off whenever there was a shortage in Israel.
There were guns everywhere (inevitably held by Israelis) and the security at the airport was, to say the least, heavy-handed. The bus we were travelling in was stoned by Hasidic Jews. As a non-Palestinian I was appalled at our and their treatment. It seems nothing has changed. I am deeply ashamed of being English. Thank God for Scotland.
Tony Kime
Kelso
WHEN we hear reports of people in Gaza, an “open-air prison” crammed with more than two million people from all over Palestine, being told to go south to avoid the bombs, think of the island of Arran,
which is about the same size. However, state terrorism, bent on the illegal Zionist aim of ethnic cleansing, then sends its fighter bombers to the south to kill indiscriminately more old people, children and their mothers.
There is not an excuse for Hamas’s terrorism, though the UN General Secretary hinted at a partial explanation of the last 75 years of history. Neither is it a blank cheque of permission to impose a regime of terrorism from a few thousand feet in the sky.
READ MORE: The history and lasting impact of UK interference in the Middle East
If war is only another intense form of politics then surely only serious politics can begin to settle the region, just as some small measures began to make the “Troubles” more manageable in the six counties of Northern Ireland.
Another example of a so-called “open-air prison” was Apartheid South Africa with the enclosed black Bantustans around its borders. Now that racist Apartheid has legally gone, the struggles are more understandable.
Britain’s governments had a poor record of supporting South Africa’s racist regime just as now arms factories in Scotland sell weapons to Zionist Israel. So we cannot say it is only the USA $3 billion annual subsidy that props up their “aircraft carrier” in the Middle East.
Norman Lockhart
Innerleithen
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