So, here's one of those "Open Letters" by a bunch of moralistic intellectuals published on August 18 with my comments in square brackets []:-
The latest chapter of the conflict between Israel and Palestine began when Israeli forces abducted two civilians, a doctor and his brother, from Gaza. An incident scarcely reported anywhere, except in the Turkish press [actually, it was widely published in Israel and I remember an interview with the wife]. The following day the Palestinians took an Israeli soldier prisoner [after spending months digging a tunnel some dozens of meters long, if not hundreds] -- and proposed a negotiated exchange against prisoners taken by the Israelis -- there are approximately 10,000 in Israeli jails. [almost all involved in one way or another in terror which means trying to kill civilians]
That this "kidnapping" [hey, these "kidnappers" also killed two Israeli soldiers and wounded another in the process] was considered an outrage, whereas the illegal military occupation of the West Bank [not illegal my dears but as a result of aggression during May-June 1967] and the systematic appropriation of its natural resources -- most particularly that of water -- [ah, but they have been appropriating our water as they sit on more than one-thrid of Israel's water resources and the rest they have been contaminating] by the Israeli Defense (!) Forces is considered a regrettable but realistic fact of life, is typical of the double standards repeatedly employed by the West in face of what has befallen the Palestinians, on the land allotted to them by international agreements, during the last seventy years. [now, this is a good one. the allocation of all the land that today comprises Israel plus Jordan plus all inbetween was made in the period of 1919-1922, just over 70 years ago so these moral intelletuals conveniently select another self-serving cut-off date unfavorable to Jewish international legal rights]
Today outrage follows outrage; makeshift missiles cross sophisticated ones [ah, so this isn't a double standard? the makeshift ones are the offensive and the sophisticated ones are defensive, no?]. The latter usually find their target situated where the disinherited and crowded poor live, waiting for what was once called Justice. Both categories of missile rip bodies apart horribly--who but field commanders can forget this for a moment?
Each provocation and counter-provocation is contested and preached over. But the subsequent arguments, accusations and vows, all serve as a distraction in order to divert world attention from a long-term military, economic and geographic practice whose political aim is nothing less than the liquidation [whoa! is this a charge of genocide? like suicide bombers in buses?] of the Palestinian nation.
This has to be said loud and clear, for the practice, only half declared and often covert, is advancing fast these days, and, in our opinion, it must be unceasingly and eternally recognized for what it is and resisted.
PS: As Juliano Mer Khamis, director of the documentary film Arna's Children, asked: "Who is going to paint the 'Guernica' of Lebanon?"
John Berger
Noam Chomsky
Harold Pinter
José Saramago
Eduardo Galeano
Arundhati Roy
Naomi Klein
Howard Zinn
Charles Glass
Richard Falk
Gore Vidal
Russell Banks
Thomas Keneally
Chris Abani
Carolyn Forché
Martín Espada
Jessica Hagedorn
Toni Morrison
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