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rights, freedoms and repression |
press release
Tuesday September 23, 2008 14:45
by TD - Free Palestine Campaign
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Comments (4 of 4)
Jump To Comment: 4 3 2 1Sylvia - have you the details of the report/ link for these statistics ?
The PEACE that Israel promotes is exemplified by the following 2 accurate statistics.
20% of ALL deaths of children under 1 year old in the Palestinian territories arre as a DIRECT result of checkpoints.
Of the 73 pregnant women waiting to be ALLOWED to pass through an Israeli checkpoint for medical attention, one third of these died in
childbirth AT THE CHECKPOINTS.
These figures are for the last 2 years.
"The Israelis will not harm the Palestinians if they give up the use of violence. "
Really.
So why are they still building and expanding "settlements"?
So why don't they control their "settlers"?
Why, indeed, do they allow "settlers" to colonise outside Israels borders in the first place?
And its a bit rich to mention missiles and bulldozers to score points against the Palestinians.
I do not understand the meaning of 'hope' used in this context, nor, I expect, do any of the people involved in this latest outing of a 'peace' boat. The Hamas Charter, a relevant document in all this, does not once use the word hope (or, in Arabic, amal). Instead, it rejects out of hand peace conferences and compromise, wiping out in one stroke any hope at all for anyone, Israelis or Palestinians. Since you are in Gaza as bearers of hope and since you are such chums with Hamas, will you not also carry a message from those of us who believe the Charter is one of the strongest obstacles to hope and peace?
In another sense, hope has never been out of this equation. It has been there since 1948 and before, when the Arabs of the region were offered a state of their own to administer much as they wanted. The Israelis have never taken that hope away, and today it still lies on the table. But it can only be picked up and turned into reality by those willing to agree to peace conferences and compromises. In all areas of life we employ compromise as the best means to our ends. Why, then, do you choose to ally yourselves with those who reject compromise and deny their people any hope of a future. The Israelis will not harm the Palestinians if they give up the use of violence. Doesn't that carry more real hope than merely daubing a boat with the word and using it for a publicity stunt? Lives are lost every day, and just because one side insists on everything, and insists the other should have nothing. That is not how the world works. In the concentration camps, men and women survived because they shared: a ration of bread, a blanket, a pair of old shoes. In the act of sharing, they knew hope. The Palestinians have a right to hope, as much as anyone, yet their leaders for well over sixty years have denied them that one great thing. It's the same as the blandishments of so many leaders in the past. In Soviet Russia or East Germany leaders said 'you may suffer now, but it's for the best, one day there will be a workers' paradise', and the paradise never came, and there was only room for hope the moment the leadership realized the paradise would never come. The Nazis promised a Thousand-Year Reich and lives of unsurpassed magnificence for the Aryan race, and it ended in endless suffering and death. Hamas promises an Islamic theocracy from the Mediterranean to Iraq, and all it has brought so far is suffering and all it promises is generation after generation of young dead Palestinians. And all the time, the reality of a Palestinian state slips past like a ghost. When Palestinian leaders say 'The Jews love life, but we love death', it snuffs out hope, because there can be no hope in the love of death.
I want Palestinians to have hope, but I know they cannot have it, do not deserve to have it, if that means extinguishing Israeli hopes for peace and a secure future for their children. Hope, like love, is generous. We Irish have seen enough of hatred burning them both. Why should we, of all people, head off in boats to support the one side that will not embrace or offer hope? Can't we bring something better than support for terrorism? Can't we talk about the compromises that led to a better life for the Northern Irish? Or the difficult compromise that created a Free State and yet led, in the fulness of time, to a prosperity and a political role my grandparents would only have stared at, mouths open, eyes agape?
If I were to wake one fine morning and steer my 'wee bonny boat' over the sea to Gaza, with whom would I talk about hope, with whom might I discourse about peace. Imagine I were an Israeli peace delegation, bearing hope. With whom could I reach an agreement? Who would give me hope in return? Who would guarantee me peace in exchange for the peace I would bring? The Israelis, on whose behalf I would offer this peace, are not Nazis, otherwise there would be no Palestinians in Gaza or the West Bank. They want peace and have made that clear time after time. But to find peace I would first have to find a partner, someone who shared my hope that Jews and Arabs could lie down together like sheep. Who would that partner in peace be? A commander from Hamas? A spokesman for Islamic jihad? Come along, I speak Arabic, I can cut the mustard. But who exactly will cut the mustard with me? I bring hope with me, dreams. Business partnerships in agriculture, in medicine, in hi-tech developments. Just sit down with me and listen to what I have to say. Within weeks, Gaza could be transformed. Its peoples sufferings would soon come to an end. Who will speak with me? Who will be the Palestinian Martin Luther King, and speak with me, and break bread with me and share his dreams with me? Do not send me someone whose dreams are of bloodshed and conquest, he brings nothing out of so much suffering. Do not send me someone who wants to kill me when my back is turned. Do not send me someone who finds greater solace in suffering than he does in hope. And do not send me someone for whom Islamic dominion is more precious than the lives of his own brutalized children. I have a dream, but I cannot share it with men of blood.
You love Palestine, and I do not find fault with you for that. It is a beginning. But you do not love Palestine enough. You take a deeply partisan view, and you distort the conflict out of all recognition. If you can only see that the Israelis want peace with their hearts and souls, you will see that there is hope, that there is a way to bring about peace and reconciliation. Why not? You have won their confidence. Go to them in your boats, bring them whatever you have brought, and tell them they have got this thing wrong, that there is a way out for everyone. Tell them they are greedy, that they want everything, and that nobody can have everything. Tell them the people of Israel are waiting for an answer. Not for missiles, not for suicide bombers, not for bulldozers in the street. That is no way to win men's hearts. If you are sincere, if you sail with the tide to Gaza to bring hope, then think much harder than you have done about what hope in that context means. Please think and then become a force for peace. If you cannot do that, please don't even disembark, for you will have brought nothing, least of all hope, least of all peace.