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