From: DIANE V. MCLOUGHLIN
Sent: March 5, 2010 4:45:59 AM
To: peter.shurman@pc.ola.org
Cc: NDP; endapartheid
Dear Mr. Shurman,
I thank you for your response.
You indicate in your response that you do not object to discussion of 'problems' in the Middle East.
With respect, can you point to the instances wherein you personally objected via
formal motion on the floor, to the
military occupation of Palestinians in the West Bank, or the military siege
of the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza?
Otherwise, your objection and motion appear to be of garden-variety apologia to the
status quo of Israel's destruction of the Palestinian people.
South Africans such as archbishop Desmond Tutu,
who suffered directly under South African Apartheid, have gone to the West Bank and have witnessed for themselves the situation there. The verdict: That the Apartheid
regime imposed by Israel on the West Bank is WORSE than South African Apartheid ever was.
How is this so? Blacks were used as cheap, slave labor in Apartheid South Africa.
But they did work. Israelis do not want to give Palestinians even that, preferring
employment strictly for Jews.
----------------------------------
February 15, 2010: TIME.COM:
"If, and as long as between the Jordan (River) and the [Mediterranean] Sea there is only one political entity, named Israel, it will end up being either non-Jewish or nondemocratic," warned Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak last week.
"If the Palestinians vote in elections it is a bi-national state, and if they don't vote it is an apartheid state."
Former President Jimmy Carter suffered a verbal pummeling three years ago for comparing the standoff between Israel and the Palestinians to apartheid — the South African system that meant not only segregation, but a denial of citizenship to a whole category of people. And so it was ironic that a key Israeli leader warned his people that the status quo on the territories conquered by Israel in 1967 amounts to the same thing. Barak's point was to warn that unless the Palestinians are given an independent state of their own, the world will eventually notice that their lives are controlled by an Israeli state that denies them citizenship, raising the specter of the sort of international isolation and sanctions that helped change South Africa.
(Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1962232,00.html?xid=rss-topstories&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+time%2Ftopstories+%28TIME%3A+Top+Stories%29#ixzz0hGhdPvWT )
------------------------------------
Jews-only roads in the West Bank, Mr. Shurman.
Citizenship stripped, after Israel's 1967 military takeover, from native Palestinian residents living in Jerusalem whose ancestry
goes back into the mists of time.
Family home demolitions with ten minutes' notice. Arbitrary prison detentions without charge.
Checkpoint beatings. Shooting children for sport. Torture.
Extrajudicial political executions. Women in labor denied egris to hospital, losing their fetuses
at IDF-controlled West Bank checkpoints.
Counter to your Chamberlain-like argument, I argue that not to call it what it is,
Apartheid, is to demonstrate prejudice in favor of the oppressor state of Israel
against the oppressed Palestinians.
You reiterate a round argument
that on the one hand you represent your
constituents, while on the other hand there may be times when you and your constituents
will disagree.
Sir Gerald Kaufman, Jewish UK MP, statement in the house of parliament:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMGuYjt6CP8 (5 min.)
And on war crimes in Gaza, article 'Israel: Evidence of War Crimes in Gaza Grows by the Day'
It is an oxymoron to categorize a state as democratic when it is
not a democratic state of all its citizens.
You say it is prejudicial to use the term apartheid before the dialogue begins.
But I ask, when does it begin, Mr. Shurman? I'm curious to know, in light of the
children in Gaza, children who are starving, who are rendered deaf by Israel's
deliberate torrorization of the people with sonic booms from supersonic
military jet flybys - children who are losing the very will to live.
Where and when, Mr. Shurman, is your motion taking righteous umbrage on their behalf?
Diane V. McLoughlin, writer, peace activist
www.mcloughlinpost.blogspot.com
www.mcloughlinpost.com
Latest article: What is Wrong With Palestinians?
No comments:
Post a Comment