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Coalition for Peace with Justice
Letter to Raleigh News & Observer [to CPWJ Letters page] [ to CPWJ home page] December 19, 2002Ethnic 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] |
