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Coalition for Peace with Justice
Letter to Raleigh News & Observer

[to CPWJ Letters page]  [ to CPWJ home page]

December 19, 2002

Ethnic cleansing by Israel

Anya Gordon's Dec. 17 letter, "No 'ethnic cleansing', insists that Israel is
guilty of neither ethnic cleansing nor human rights abuses, in contrast to
numerous studies by the U.S State Department and the United Nations.

In 1948, Israel's militia destroyed hundreds of Palestinian villages,
forcing the exodus of two-thirds of the population, over 700,000, from their
homes. In violation of international law, Israel has prohibited Palestinians
from returning to their homes and farms, many of which were cultivated by
the same families for over a thousand years.

Today, the ethnic cleansing continues -- in the last two years, Israel has
built more than 50 illegal civilian settlements on Palestinian land stolen
after 1967. Jewish settlers, protected by the Israeli military, have been
shooting Palestinians as they harvest olives, and recently attacked and beat
two Americans, Mary Hughes-Thomson, 68, and James Delaplain,74.

Arabs living in Israel are treated worse than second class citizens.
Israel's laws have long prohibited them from buying land, and many Arab
neighborhoods are denied basic services of electricity, water and sewage.

Desmond Tutu, who knows something about human rights violations, recently
said: "I've been very deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land; it
reminded me so much of what happened to us blacks in South Africa."

Incredibly, Gordon has the gall to refer to George Orwell in her defense of
Israel, a so-called democratic state where some people are far more equal
than others.

John Crane

[to CPWJ Letters page]  [ to CPWJ home page]