Sources support that there is an Israeli occupation
By Letter to the Editor on June 24, 2020.
In my Herald letter of May 14 I used the word “occupation” re the toxic Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In response on May 28 HonestReporting Canada (HRC) declared that my use of that word was disingenuous and misinformed, a big lie: there has been no such occupation.
HRC claims to promote fairness and accuracy in Canadian media coverage of Israel and the Middle East. Its 45,000 vigilant members daily monitor every newspaper, radio station and TV outlet to expose wherever bias might rear its ugly head. I am astonished that HRC has found me so grossly misinformed, because my extensive catalogue of information about the Israeli occupation includes sources like these.
Benny Morris of the Middle East Studies department at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba Israel included in his book “Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict 1881-2001” a lengthy description of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. He wrote “Israel’s occupation was founded on brute force, repression and fear, collaboration and treachery, beatings and torture chambers.”
Noam Chomsky of MIT wrote in his book “Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy” a large section about the Israeli occupation of Palestine in which he classed Israel as a failed, outlaw, terrorist state.
Theodor Meron was a former adviser on international law to the Government of Israel, professor of International Law at New York University and Oxford and president of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. In 2017 Holocaust survivor Meron published in the American Journal of International Law an article on Israel’s 50 years violation of international law by its occupation of the territories of over a million Arabs, mostly Palestinians. “Israel must understand that the violation of Palestinian human rights and the colonization of territory populated by other peoples can no longer be accepted in our time.”
If the best propaganda that HonestReporting Canada can come up with is the preposterous claim that there has been no Israeli occupation, those who fund them are being swindled.
Owen Holmes
Lethbridge
10-9
excellent letter. the atrocities that israel has been permitted to inflict on human beings, and be able to get away with, is unacceptable. curious that the writer must quote jewish authors and thinkers; with little doubt, to quote non-jewish peoples who seek to expose the lurid affairs of israel tends to be attacked as anti-semitism, rather than, say, be accepted in the truer spirit of pro-humanism with which such criticisms are intended. the good news is that there are many israelis that have long been opposed to the official political approach of numerous israeli govts and the apartheid and theft of land and the crimes against humanity practiced by the state of israel and its corrupted, toxic, and psychopathic leadership. one can then hope that in this dawning era of greater concern for all people and life forms, that all peoples in israel will also grow to see the necessity of inclusion, equality, and respect.
Thank you for this, Dr. Holmes.
Thank you ,Dr. Holmes, biff and IMO. Thomas Friedman is a good read on the subject. But I have lived in Israel and saw first hand it’s police state tactics. I am not a Jew or an Arab, and I had no position on the subject before living there and had never read or studied any position on the subject before my residency there. I read the English /Jewish slant newspapers and the English/Arabic slant newspapers available there at the time. As well, I watched the one half hour of the English version from the Jewish t.v. news and the one half hour a day of the English version from the Arabic t.v. news. Sometimes ,my view of reality on an incident did not match the Jewish or Arabic reports.
I found the society to be very tribal- several Jewish and Arabic tribes , not to mention Armenians etc. Some tribes even though smaller in number have the most money and power. I do not believe that it is humanely possible to see a resolution to the situation.