Friday, July 28, 2006
Israeli Missiles Rip Into Medics' Esprit de Corps
The world has expressed outrage at the deliberate Israeli attack on an UN observation post, killing 4 UN Observers which seems to have achieved Israels aims as the UN decares it will close all it's posts in southern Lebanon. This allows Israel to hide the war crimes being committed by them daily as in this report from the LA Times not to mention the targetting of clearly marked refugee caravans.
Writers Protest Israel's War on Lebanese
A Letter to the Press
from 18 writers - including 3 Nobel Prize recipients.
The latest chapter of the conflict between Israel and Palestine began
when Israeli forces abducted two civilians, a doctor and his brother,
from Gaza. An incident scarcely reported anywhere, except in the
Turkish press. The following day the Palestinians took an Israeli
soldier prisoner - and proposed a negotiated exchange against prisoners taken by the Israelis - there are approximately 10,000 in Israeli jails.
That this "kidnapping" was considered an outrage, whereas the illegal military occupation of the West Bank and the systematic appropriation of its natural resources - most particularly that of water - by the Israeli Defence (!) Forces is considered a regrettable but realistic fact of life, is typical of the double standards repeatedly employed by the West in face of what has befallen the Palestinians, on the land allotted to them by international agreements, during the last seventy years.
Today outrage follows outrage; makeshift missiles cross sophisticated ones. The latter usually find their target situated where the disinherited and crowded poor live, waiting for what was once called Justice. Both categories of missile rip bodies apart horribly - who but field commanders can forget this for a moment?
Each provocation and counter-provocation is contested and preached over. But the subsequent arguments, accusations and vows, all serve as a distraction in order to divert world attention from a long-term military, economic and geographic practice whose political aim is nothing less than the liquidation of the Palestinian nation.
This has to be said loud and clear for the practice, only half declared
and often covert, is advancing fast these days, and, in our opinion, it
must be unceasingly and eternally recognised for what it is and
resisted.
PS: As Juliano Mer Khamis, director of the documentary film Arna's
Children, asked: "Who is going to paint the 'Guernica' of Lebanon?"
John Berger
Noam Chomsky
Harold Pinter
Jos? Saramago
Eduardo Galeano
Arundhati Roy
Naomi Klein
Howard Zinn
Charles Glass
Richard Falk
Gore Vidal
Russell Banks
Thomas Keneally
Chris Abani
Carolyn Forche
Martin Espada
Jessica Hagedorn
Toni Morrison
[This letter has been printed in Le Monde, Paris; El Pais, Madrid, The
Independent, London, La Republica, Milan, etc. etc., including in
Israel.]
Contact
John Berger
Quincy, Mieussy
74440 TANINGES, FRANCE
TEL/FAX - 00-33-450-430 336
email: witchazel@wanadoo.fr
from 18 writers - including 3 Nobel Prize recipients.
The latest chapter of the conflict between Israel and Palestine began
when Israeli forces abducted two civilians, a doctor and his brother,
from Gaza. An incident scarcely reported anywhere, except in the
Turkish press. The following day the Palestinians took an Israeli
soldier prisoner - and proposed a negotiated exchange against prisoners taken by the Israelis - there are approximately 10,000 in Israeli jails.
That this "kidnapping" was considered an outrage, whereas the illegal military occupation of the West Bank and the systematic appropriation of its natural resources - most particularly that of water - by the Israeli Defence (!) Forces is considered a regrettable but realistic fact of life, is typical of the double standards repeatedly employed by the West in face of what has befallen the Palestinians, on the land allotted to them by international agreements, during the last seventy years.
Today outrage follows outrage; makeshift missiles cross sophisticated ones. The latter usually find their target situated where the disinherited and crowded poor live, waiting for what was once called Justice. Both categories of missile rip bodies apart horribly - who but field commanders can forget this for a moment?
Each provocation and counter-provocation is contested and preached over. But the subsequent arguments, accusations and vows, all serve as a distraction in order to divert world attention from a long-term military, economic and geographic practice whose political aim is nothing less than the liquidation of the Palestinian nation.
This has to be said loud and clear for the practice, only half declared
and often covert, is advancing fast these days, and, in our opinion, it
must be unceasingly and eternally recognised for what it is and
resisted.
PS: As Juliano Mer Khamis, director of the documentary film Arna's
Children, asked: "Who is going to paint the 'Guernica' of Lebanon?"
John Berger
Noam Chomsky
Harold Pinter
Jos? Saramago
Eduardo Galeano
Arundhati Roy
Naomi Klein
Howard Zinn
Charles Glass
Richard Falk
Gore Vidal
Russell Banks
Thomas Keneally
Chris Abani
Carolyn Forche
Martin Espada
Jessica Hagedorn
Toni Morrison
[This letter has been printed in Le Monde, Paris; El Pais, Madrid, The
Independent, London, La Republica, Milan, etc. etc., including in
Israel.]
Contact
John Berger
Quincy, Mieussy
74440 TANINGES, FRANCE
TEL/FAX - 00-33-450-430 336
email: witchazel@wanadoo.fr
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