Israel must face up to its lack of moral authority
Your Letters
July 31, 2006
M Green gives one example from the 10,000 Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners held by Israel (Letters, July 29). This is someone who murdered a family more than 20 years ago. The Israelis have been killing families daily over the past three weeks and you don't avoid moral responsibility because you kill at a distance with sophisticated weapons. I doubt if the one surviving girl of the family on the beach in Gaza killed last month when an Israeli warship fired on civilians cared about whether her family were killed with a gun or a precision rocket.
Ariel Sharon, the previous prime minister, was accused, even by the official Israeli Kahan Commission, of responsibility for war crimes in the massacre at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp in Lebanon in 1982 and it said he should never hold public office again. If you want to know why Hizbollah exists, look at the history.
Many in the Israeli military are trigger-happy. There were two separate cases in English courts this year where the coroners concluded that these two people had been unlawfully killed by Israeli troops.
If they do that to outside observers, just imagine what they do to the Palestinians.I make these points not to engage in a competitive exchange of atrocity accounts but to establish that Israel does not have the moral high ground. As long as it is encouraged to believe that it has, then it will not face its own record and the perspective from the other side. The only solution that has a chance of lasting is a viable Palestinian state, broadly within the pre-1967 boundaries and with its own free access to the rest of the world. Also, as we recognised in Ireland, the release of prisoners to diminish the bitterness.
Those who are supportive of Israel should be questioning whether US policy is in that country's interests. America is pouring weapons in and pushing the Israelis to fight a proxy war as a warning to Iran because after Iraq and Afghanistan it is hard for Bush to engage in any more military initiatives directly. To have united the different factions in Lebanon and greatly increased the support for Hizbollah throughout the Middle East can hardly be in Israel's long-term interests.
Isobel Lindsay, 9 Knocklea Place, Biggar.
July 31, 2006
M Green gives one example from the 10,000 Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners held by Israel (Letters, July 29). This is someone who murdered a family more than 20 years ago. The Israelis have been killing families daily over the past three weeks and you don't avoid moral responsibility because you kill at a distance with sophisticated weapons. I doubt if the one surviving girl of the family on the beach in Gaza killed last month when an Israeli warship fired on civilians cared about whether her family were killed with a gun or a precision rocket.
Ariel Sharon, the previous prime minister, was accused, even by the official Israeli Kahan Commission, of responsibility for war crimes in the massacre at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp in Lebanon in 1982 and it said he should never hold public office again. If you want to know why Hizbollah exists, look at the history.
Many in the Israeli military are trigger-happy. There were two separate cases in English courts this year where the coroners concluded that these two people had been unlawfully killed by Israeli troops.
If they do that to outside observers, just imagine what they do to the Palestinians.I make these points not to engage in a competitive exchange of atrocity accounts but to establish that Israel does not have the moral high ground. As long as it is encouraged to believe that it has, then it will not face its own record and the perspective from the other side. The only solution that has a chance of lasting is a viable Palestinian state, broadly within the pre-1967 boundaries and with its own free access to the rest of the world. Also, as we recognised in Ireland, the release of prisoners to diminish the bitterness.
Those who are supportive of Israel should be questioning whether US policy is in that country's interests. America is pouring weapons in and pushing the Israelis to fight a proxy war as a warning to Iran because after Iraq and Afghanistan it is hard for Bush to engage in any more military initiatives directly. To have united the different factions in Lebanon and greatly increased the support for Hizbollah throughout the Middle East can hardly be in Israel's long-term interests.
Isobel Lindsay, 9 Knocklea Place, Biggar.
posted by HRM Deborah of Israel and the Messenger of Peace at 5:25 PM
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