Dear MAP supporter, Please take the time to read this rather long email. You may not agree with everything in it but it includes at the end a proposal for further local action in support of the Palestinians and I would like your response to it. It is now clear that the current suffering of the peoples of the Middle East is mainly the result of Western foreign policy since 1918 and that further bombing can only exacerbate the situation. It is equally true that our efforts to raise funds for MAP are but a drop in the ocean and that humanitarian aid can only ameliorate some of the effects of the war crimes of Zionist Israel. Our efforts may make us feel better but they do very little to change the situation in Palestine. Furthermore, knowing that Britain was largely responsible for the situation in Palestine and that it is still an influential player in the Middle East, there is an obligation on us to attempt to change Britain’s Palestinian policy. A just resolution of the Palestinian question would do much to pacify the turmoil elsewhere in the Middle East. Britain parrots the Zionist mantra that ‘Israel has the right to defend itself’ while totally ignoring the right of the Palestinians under international law to oppose the occupation and colonisation of their land by Europeans. The firing of rockets from Gaza, far from being an act of terrorism or a war crime, is a legitimate act of opposition to the occupation. Had Hamas not persisted with the rocket attacks, the blockade of Gaza would have continued in force. As it is, the siege has been partially lifted and further improvements may result, albeit at a terrible cost to the Palistinians. Britain continues to pay lip service to the ‘peace process’ and a ‘two-state solution’ while at the same time supplying arms to Israel, condoning ‘proportionate’ criminal acts against the Palestinians and refusing to support resolutions critical of Israel in the UN Security Council. It is clear that the ‘peace process’ is going nowhere as is the ‘two-state solution’ for the obvious reason that Israeli insists on the retention of illegal settlements in the West Bank and the annexation of East Jerusalem, demands which prevent a viable Palestinian state to be established. More significantly, this so-called solution takes no account of the estimated 5 million Palestinians refugees in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and elsewhere whose right of return Israel refuses to accept and who are the largest group of Palestinians who have been subjected to Zionist terror. Furthermore, a two-state solution would leave Israel to continue its apartheid policies which discriminate against non-Jewish citizens of Israel. The Zionist construct of a Jewish state is at best anti-democratic, at its worst, fascistic. What then is meant by the Western promoted ‘peace’ settlement? Clearly it is a settlement where the Palestinians are to be obliged to accept the European colonisation of their land for all time and a far lesser proportion of the land of the former Palestinian mandate than their numbers alone would warrant. (The total population of Israel is 8.1 million, two million of whom are officially non-Jews. The official number of Israeli Jews is artificially inflated because non-believers are registered as Jews. The Arab population of the West Bank and Gaza is variously estimated but always exceeds 4 million. Together with the Palestinian refugees outside the former mandate they number over 9 million as opposed to the 6.1 million Jews in Israel). Little wonder, therefore, that Hamas refuses to recognise Israel. To do so would be to legitimise the seizure of Palestinian land, illegal under international law. Like almost every national liberation movement since 1946, Hamas has been designated ‘ a terrorist organisation’ by some or all of the Western powers – Malayan communists, Filipino Huks, Vietnam’s NLF, Cypriot EOKA , Kenyan Mau Mau, South Africa’s ANC and Ireland’s IRA have all been accorded the distinction. Britain now plays the same game against Hamas, allowing it to ignore the legitimate demands of an organisation democratically elected by the Palestinians as their Government party and to ignore the actual state terrorism perpetrated by the Zionists and others. What then constitutes a just solution to the ‘Palestine question’? I have thought long and hard about this and I always come to the same conclusion. Political Zionism developed as a consequence of centuries of Jewish persecution, mainly in Christian countries. Born at the end of the 19th century, it bears all the hallmarks of the century in which the European nations which exist today largely emerged. Zionism proposed that what Jews required to free themselves of persecution was a state with a majority Jewish population; one where Jews were the dominant group. This approach is at odds with the 20th century approach to conflict resolution, based upon the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the equality of all people. This 20th.century approach found its clearest expression in the overthrow of apartheid in South Africa. A Jewish state imposed on Palestine is a 19th.century anachronism in a 21st. century world and it is bound to fail in the long term. The only permanent solution to the ‘Palestinian question’ is a state which recognises the human rights of all the peoples of the former mandated territory; a unitary secular state in which all citizens are equal under the law. However remote the prospect of such a state now appears to be, this is what we should campaign for. The prospect of a free South Africa must have appeared equally remote to those who started the struggle against apartheid in the 1950s. How then are we to go about changing our Government’s support for Zionist Israel? The channels open to use are limited but we must utilise those which are available. A week ago I received a letter from --- my MP in which he says “I am keen to keep in touch with the views of my constituents ...... Your replies will assist me in understanding your views and will enable me to take them into account when representing you in Parliament”. .. I suggest that we write to both MPs and invite them to come to a public meeting locally where we will present our views on Palestine. We should ask them to speak for us in Parliament and challenge the support given to Israel by our Government. I am sending this proposal to the 60+ MAP supporters on my MAP contact list. If you agree to sign the invitation letter, please let me know. At the same time, pass this proposal on to others who may also be willing to add their names. If we get, say, 100 or more signatures it would be very difficult for the MPs to refuse to meet us in what would amount to a constituency surgery open to all. Should we achieve this number of potential signatories we could then decide on the precise wording of the letter and the manner in which our case is to be presented to the MPs. Every potential signatory would have the right to withdraw if they did not agree the letter or the form of the meeting. Anyone who wishes to participate in drafting the invitation letter or deciding how our case should be presented should let me know. It is important that as many views as possible should be incorporated in these discussions. I look forward to hearing whether you agree to support this initiative.
Posted on: Fri, 29 Aug 2014 10:18:04 +0000
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