Angie Tibbs:  Dr. Ezzat, let’s start at the beginning.  In January 2011 hundreds of thousands of Egyptians began their Tahrir Square occupation; you were on the ground there as a journalist and as a medical doctor. Would you recreate the mood of the demonstrators, and, in fact, of the country?

Ashraf Ezzat:  Egyptians still refer to those 18 days (January 25- February 11) as the glorious days of the revolution. Those days will undoubtedly carve their place in the modern history of Egypt. And contrary to what the mainstream media concluded, the Tahrir Square saga that captured the world may have been called for by some activists using the internet social media, but it was mainly fueled and triggered by years of political corruption and oppression. The build-up for this uprising has been brewing for years and specifically after Mubarak made it clear he was bequeathing the presidency for his son, Gamal.

Hence, the general mood of the Egyptians was a blend of dissatisfaction, anger and a potent urge for change. It is funny but it seems that the Egyptians had a clear-cut idea what they wanted from the first day they took to the streets. I joined the protests from the second day; the people on the streets were not divided about their demands.  You could see it in their eyes and hear it as they chanted “Bread, freedom and social justice” … and those three demands are what the “Tahrir Square” is still fighting for.

Dr. Ashraf Ezzat in Tahrir Square

AT:  One of the demands of the protesters was for President Mubarak to step down, effectively ending his 30 year authoritarian rule.  This he did on February 11, at which time the military council took over the country, promising to bring about democracy and to respect the wishes of the people. Did this happen, and did anyone expect it would happen?

AE: The military council of armed forces (SCAF), whose generals are Mubarak’s handpicked appointees, did nothing in the last ten months to promote democracy in the country; on the contrary, the generals, and through their ineptness or unwillingness actually to restore security on the street, have helped to bolster the tide of the counter-revolution.

And hadn’t it been for the thousands who lately returned to Tahrir Square to denounce the military rule and ask for a hand-over of power to a civilian salvation government, the revolution would have been done with and declared dead.

The majority of the Egyptian people kind of hoped the military would lead them out of these difficult times but while most of Egyptians didn’t doubt the capability of SCAF to do so, a lot of activists and political analysts suspected that the way SCAF has been handling things would eventually put the country on the road to democracy.

AT: Are you saying that there were those who believed that in time the SCAF would have, if left in power, brought about democracy?

AE: No, I meant to say that the downfall of Mubarak was so abrupt that nobody actually had seen it coming, not even the military which is part and parcel of the despotic old regime. And while stunned by the uprising’s rapid pace, military generals were following how this people vs. regime uprising was going to end, and they decided not to take sides until this whole thing was almost settled.

And when it was obvious, despite the White House’s pro-Mubarak stance, that the people were gaining the upper hand in this uprising the military, only at that moment, decided to side with the people and this is when the protesters in Tahrir square chanted “ The people and military are joined hand in hand”

But not everybody was fooled by this “wait and see” approach by the military. A lot of activists and political analysts knew that the self-serving generals would try to somehow steer this transitional period in their favor. And that is exactly what they did when they proposed a new draft for a constitution that would shield the military from parliamentary scrutiny and which declares the military the guardian of “constitutional legitimacy,” suggesting the armed forces could have the final word on major policies.

AT:  How did Egyptians feel about the military and the police from the commencement of the Mubarak regime up to the demonstrations of January 2011?

AE: Actually Mubarak’s regime was just a police regime. A giant police apparatus that stifled dissent by violent means and that only served and protected the corrupt elite and the president. The citizen/police relation has been quite tense over years of coercion and misconduct. Throughout most of Mubarak’s rule Egyptians feared and somehow distrusted the police.

But in the last couple of years and prior to his ouster they began to loathe the corruption that swept across the whole security apparatus that turned the policeman into a thug with a badge, placed him above the law and allowed him to get away with almost anything … even crimes.

The famous case of the killing of Khalid Saeed, young Egyptian man from Alexandria, who was beaten to death by security forces after he was indicted on framed charges, has incited unprecedented anger and helped trigger the revolution in January. 

While the majority of Egyptians had negative feelings for the police they honored and respected the military for its patriotic role of protecting the sovereignty of the state and for the long and heroic confrontation with Israel especially after the 1973 war.

But I hope that Egyptians will make the necessary and fair distinction between the military forces or the army as a whole and the generals in the military council when they come to judge the conduct of SCAF in the transitional period that followed January 25 revolution.

AT:  In the months since the occupation of Tahrir Square ended, have there been any changes meaningful to Egyptians?

AE: Though a lot of things have remained the same if not for the worse, I would say that the only thing that really changed in the life of Egyptians is their ability to say NO to anything and anyone. And also to vote freely, as we all have witnessed the huge turnout for the first post-Mubarak parliamentary elections.

The Egyptian people broke the fear barrier and this, for people who have been enduring under tyranny for centuries, is quite an achievement. Moreover, I truly believe that once placed on the path of real democracy, the whole world will witness a new and amazingly different Egypt.

AT: Since the demonstrations ended in February, thousands of people have been arrested and tried before military tribunals, yet throughout the occupation of Tahrir Square there appeared to be good relations between the protesters and the security forces.  What caused these widespread arrests and are they continuing?

AE: As I mentioned before, many of the Tahrir activists viewed the stance of the military with suspicion and as days went by it became obvious that the generals were trying to give the old regime a comeback chance. The scenario of chaos and sectarian violence that Mubarak threatened would engulf the country if he was to step down was beginning to be unleashed.

Shortly after the toppling of Mubarak, Egypt began to witness months of unrest, economic plunge, lack of security forces on the street, sectarian violence and a series of churches attacks which culminated in the lethal clashes with a Coptic rally on October 9 that left 27 killed by the military forces in what is now known as the Maspero massacre.

But this was not what the revolutionary youths and activists demanded when they initiated the January uprising. This was not why people got killed in the protests. The people didn’t topple Mubarak to have a military dictatorship instead.

So this is why the honeymoon with the military didn’t last and it wasn’t long before many activists began to point the finger at SCAF for all the scenarios aimed at thwarting the revolution tide. And it wasn’t long either before the thousands – almost 15,000 according to Human Rights Watch – were thrown behind bars and tried before military tribunals until this very day.

AT:  Protesters have again taken to the streets of Cairo and elsewhere in Egypt, and the police are responding, thus far killing over 30 people. What has prompted this, and what do you anticipate happening as a result?

AE:   According to the counter-revolution plan, which the United States fully backed, the military was supposed to grab the power permanently. To set the stage for such scenario, the military in the last ten months has done everything possible not only to thwart the advance of the revolution but to turn the Egyptians against the idea itself as the plan augmented the sense of vulnerability and insecurity of the average Egyptian citizen and cunningly linked it to the revolution.

And just when the generals thought they had managed to hijack the revolution, they were in for a big surprise.

Emboldened by the power they’ve got and by the American support, the generals dared to propose a new draft for a constitution that could only pave the way for a military fascism and this is where they went wrong.  This blatant exploitation on part of the military council triggered the pouring of thousands into Tahrir Square once again in what is now dubbed “the second revolution”.

AT:  The military council is now promising presidential elections before July of 2012.  Is this a satisfactory response to the current uprising? Will the Egyptian people accept this or will they view it as an attempt by the military to divert world attention from its ongoing crackdown? Furthermore, do Egyptians accept the military as a caretaker government? 

AE: Egyptians didn’t flock back to Tahrir Square to demand elections. The protesters in Tahrir Square have made it clear that they don’t want the military council as a caretaker and moreover they insist that the council should step aside and hand over power to a civilian salvation government. In January the protesters in Tahrir Square wanted Mubarak to step down, and in November they wanted the military to step aside.

AT:  Were you surprised to hear the US State Department initially praising the “exercise of self-restraint and professionalism” of the Egyptian security forces with respect to the present demonstrations?

AE:  There seems to be a growing number of people in and around the Tahrir Square angry at being fired on by weapons supplied from countries like the US, making nice noises about democracy and restraint in Egypt. The US government and its weapon companies continue to supply tools of repression, usually for profit, to those who they well know will use them to violate human rights and repress their own citizens.

So once again the unexpected course of the Egyptian revolution – and contrary to the conspiracy theorists who view the Arab revolutions as orchestrated by the CIA & the neo-cons – has exposed the flagrant American double standards in the Middle East and especially in regard to the Arab spring.

The mere fact that protesters refused to meet Mrs. Clinton, the American secretary of state, on her first visit to Cairo after the ouster of Mubarak should tell us how the revolutionary youths of Egypt view the United States’ stance on their revolution.

AT: Do you see a connection between the Egyptian military and possible US and Israel future plans for Egypt?    

AE: I doubt the Egyptian military would undertake any move that could jeopardize its patriotic history, but I would certainly be relieved if this current top command of Egypt military could be replaced soon.  No matter how we look at it, those generals of Egypt military council are part of the old regime.

Indeed our reading into the current turmoil and change gripping Egypt and the rest of the Arab world is bound to open our eyes to a brand new Arab world in the making right now – but not the Condoleezza Rice’s new Middle East. New forces are emerging and the United States will soon have to relinquish its old diplomacy in Middle East that relied mainly on the so called strong allies/dictators and try to prepare for the rise of a new political front – most probably of Islamists – that will rule in Tunisia, Libya, and Cairo and maybe Syria.

AT:  What is happening in Egypt today, and what is the mood of the people?

AE: The parliamentary polls opened amid escalating protests that reject the newly appointed prime minister and a build-up of public opinion that demands the generals must go back to their barracks. The general mood is split between the youths who seem determined to take the revolution to the farthest limit and the older generation who believe that stability and compromise is what the country needs right now.  It is split between the conservative front who thinks it is time we gave our support for the Muslim Brotherhood (the longtime outlawed Islamist political group) and the liberal groups who, despite their modest preliminary showing in the parliamentary polls, believe that we should separate the mosque from the state.

In that sense, you could say the current struggle is between the old and the new or the past and future; in other words, between the conservatives and the liberals. But I don’t think Egypt, the land of moderate Islam and the liberal hub of the Arab world, will get lost as long as the Tahrir Square spirit remains with us.

Lawlessness must have painful consequences for the lawless, not their victims.

– Stuart Littlewood

Stuart Littlewood is one of the most consistent and passionate writers on the continuing Israeli occupation of Palestine. His book, Radio Free Palestine, and his frequent articles, focus readers on the plight of the Palestinian people, on the occupiers who are responsible, and on the governments who support Israel’s slow-motion genocide and theft of an Indigenous people’s homeland, culture and history. I spoke with him recently.

Angie Tibbs: Has your active support for the Palestinian people always been a part of who you are or was there a defining moment which caused you to speak out?

Stuart Littlewood: I’m new to this game. The Palestinians’ struggle for justice isn’t taught in school here and our politicians are afraid to discuss it, so the British people are kept in ignorance.

I knew next to nothing until I had to research the subject for a newspaper column. The more I delved into it the angrier I became. The sheer evil! A short time later, in 2005, somebody who had read my column invited me to visit the West Bank and shoot pictures for a book.

First impressions of Palestine under occupation

AT: What towns and villages did you visit in occupied Palestine and what were your impressions?

SL: Much of the time was spent with Palestinian priests in their parishes. These are the Church’s front-line troops. They are abused and sometimes shot at by the Israelis, yet they remain focused and good-humoured.

The first trip took us to Jericho, Bethlehem and East Jerusalem, including the Old City, as well as smaller towns in the West Bank. We also visited Jenin, which was considered dangerous so we didn’t stay long. The town was a rubble-strewn mess after the onslaught and war crimes 3 years earlier (Israel denied accusations of massacre). The devastation was massive and brought back childhood memories of London after the Nazi blitz, which my family lived through.

All over the West Bank what struck me most was the resilience of ordinary people under brutal occupation and having to cope with endless restrictions. For them life was a cruel obstacle course, just like the Nazi occupation of Europe… There is no legal protection against the thuggish military. Every Palestinian we met urged us to tell their story when we got home because they felt sure the British people didn’t know the truth… otherwise how could we stand idly by?

These are kind, hospitable and sophisticated people who have done nothing to deserve the misery inflicted on them by the Israeli regime and its supporters in the West.

I was also shocked by the way the Israelis have systematically trashed the Holy Land and many of its antiquities. Once-beautiful landscapes, many with biblical connections, are now crowned with hideous hill-top settlements or military installations. Town and country planning principles are unheard-of. Israel’s vandalism, visible everywhere, has ruined a gentle Arab civilization and its heritage, and that’s something else they’ll never be forgiven for.

AT: Your initial trip to the West Bank was shortly after the death of President Yasser Arafat. Were people talking about him? Remembering him?

SL: No, but his image was everywhere… in village squares, on buildings, inside shops and offices. I noticed in the assembly hall of a Catholic school an enormous portrait of the Pope, and on the adjacent wall an equally large portrait of Arafat. As a symbol of resistance he’s as big as they come.

On the second trip, I visited Arafat’s mausoleum in Ramallah. The family I was staying with were delighted I wanted to do go there and they accompanied me. It was only half-built, so I asked the soldiers who stood guard: “Is he really buried here?” “Yes,” they said, visibly swelling with pride, “he’s under that slab.” For all his faults, it seems the old rascal is greatly missed.

The book project

AT: Your visits to Palestine resulted in your book, Radio Free Palestine. Tell us about that. First of all, what is the significance of the title?

SL: We were going to call it “This Land is Our Land”, but that title is already used by others. Eventually we settled on Radio Free Palestine because that’s what Palestinians need: a broadcasting service that can be heard all over the world. Proceeds from the sale of the book go to humanitarian projects in the West Bank, by the way.

The original idea was a poems-and-pictures book with me shooting the photos. But it soon became clear that to do the situation justice we needed to report in greater detail how the Israelis had effectively turned the Occupied Territories into a prison and were creating ‘facts on the ground’ to make their occupation permanent. The least we could do was tell the truth and provide readers with enough information to challenge the propaganda lies.

So I made a second visit at Easter 2006, just after Hamas’s surprise election victory. The place was in turmoil, tension was running high and plans to meet Palestinian Authority officials in Ramallah had to be scrapped. Contacts also advised that it was much too risky to visit the Gaza Strip.

All the same, I gathered a lot of material, and it was a great privilege when Jeff Halper agreed to write the Foreword. I had visited his organization ICAHD (Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions) in Jerusalem and learned a great deal from his team. Jeff is a truly courageous man and a beacon of hope.

Christians and Muslims under Hamas “all Palestinians first”

AT: You had to leave Gaza out of your book, but nevertheless you provided readers with an in-depth look at 2007 Gaza in your widely published article “Gaza and Weep,” in which you described how Gaza’s people were struggling to survive under the appalling conditions created by Israeli sanctions. What stands out most vividly in your mind today, some two years on, not only about Gaza, itself, but about Palestinian Prime Minister, Mr Ismail Haniyeh, and his party, Hamas?

SL: On the third trip, a small group of us went into Gaza and met with Mr Haniyeh, but, as you say, that was after the book came out. The Gaza Strip had been under sanctions and siege for about 18 months, so there was already a chronic shortage of food, fuel and essentials. The sick were dying from lack of medicines and hospital equipment spares. Power cuts were a daily fact of life — another Israeli weapon of collective punishment. 3,500 licensed fishermen couldn’t put to sea without being shelled by marauding Israeli gun-boats.

Mr Haniyeh and his colleagues were courteous and attentive. He gave us a generous slice of his time considering the problems he faced and the continual emergencies. I was pleased to see a strong sense of unity, with Muslims and Christians standing together against a common enemy. They are all “Palestinians first”.

I think it would be a mistake to underestimate Hamas. These are men who have pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps. Most were raised in refugee camps, and have done time in Israeli jails or been exiled for putting up resistance. But they made sure they got themselves a good education at the Islamic University. Some went to universities in Britain and the US. They are as well-equipped as we are to govern, and they have been tested almost beyond human endurance.

When I got home the Health Ministry in Gaza sent me a list of hospital spares they desperately needed. I forwarded it to our own Health Ministry and to my MP. It was ignored, and the disgust I felt – and still feel – towards our political class is beyond words.

In the meantime I was receiving heart-breaking messages from Gazan doctors telling about the difficulties at work and at home, where their shivering children struggled to study by candle-light. What could I say to them? Here we are, two years later, and we are still letting those decent and desperate people down. How despicable is that? I cringe with shame.

AT: What were your contacts telling you about the conditions in Gaza?

SL: One message in particular still haunts me. Fr Manuel Mussallam, the elderly priest in Gaza, emailed to say: “If you wish to really understand what is taking place in the Gaza Strip, please open your Bible and read the Lamentations of Jeremiah. This is what we are living. People are crying, hungry, thirsty, desperate. They need food. Even if there is food for sale, people have no money to buy it. They have no income, no opportunities to bring food from outside and no opportunities to secure money inside Gaza. No work, no livelihood, no future… They have no hope and many very poor people are aimlessly wandering around trying to beg for something from others who also have nothing. It is heartbreaking to see.”

He ended: “I beg you, we do not need pity, we need only justice. If you don’t give justice, there will be no peace. Peace is the farthest thing away from the mind of anyone, Christian or Moslem, in Gaza at this time.”

The Hamas “terror”

AT: Israel has branded Hamas a “terrorist organization” and convinced a few of its friends to do likewise. Is this a valid designation, and what role, if any, has it played vis-à-vis lasting peace?

SL: I suppose it depends where you stand on the fascist spectrum. The Nazis called the French Resistance terrorists; we called them heroes. When a vicious occupier has his jackboot on your throat you have no choice but to fight with any weapon or any method that’s available. Pinning labels like “terrorist” and “militant” on people who are defending their homes and families is ridiculous. Always the little guy with the little gun is the terrorist, never the big guy with big guns, bunker-busting bombs and nukes. This warped mentality is the greatest obstacle to peace.

I call Palestinian fighters guerrillas or freedom fighters. The Palestinians would love to hit back with F-16 jets, tanks, helicopter gunships, armed drones and naval gunboats. That would be nice and conventional and acceptable, yes? But all they have are AK47s, RPGs and rockets made in the garden shed, and they ride into battle in a pick-up truck.

The US administration defines terrorism as “an activity that (i) involves a violent act or an act dangerous to human life, property, or infrastructure; and (ii) appears to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion, or affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, kidnapping, or hostage-taking”. And they use the definition to hurt people they don’t like. The laugh is that it fits the US itself, and its special friend Israel, like a glove.

The big guys are going to have to talk with Hamas eventually and when they do, they’ll discover that Hamas are not at all the way they are painted. Britain should lead the way since we caused this mess in the first place, 92 years ago.

The evil Wall

AT: What was your reaction to seeing the illegal Wall and the hundreds of check points that are scattered throughout occupied Palestine? What effect is this curtailment of free movement having on the area and its people?

SL: I love Banksy’s graffiti art on this monstrosity. The fact that the Wall is still standing – and still being built – five years after the International Court of Justice ordered it to be pulled down tells us all we need to know about our contemptible Western leaders.

Most tourists are waved through crossings in the Wall without leaving their bus seats. The last time I stayed in Bethlehem, I caught the ordinary service bus back from Jerusalem and walked with Palestinian workers (those who were lucky enough to have permits) through the sinister maze of steel and concrete barriers and holding pens…it was a thoroughly de-humanising experience. They often have to queue for hours to get to work and queue again to get home – all part of Israel’s humiliation policy.

The Wall is also an insult to Christianity the way it seals off and imprisons towns like Bethlehem and important holy places like the Church of the Nativity. It shreds and divides communities and prevents access to Jerusalem. It disrupts the life of the Church as well as the livelihoods of ordinary people.

Its other purpose, and the real reason it bites deep into Palestinian territory, is to steal large areas of prime agricultural land and the water resources beneath. If it was purely for security, as the Israelis claim, they should have built it on the internationally–recognised 1967 border.

We have just seen the world’s high-ranking hypocrites celebrating the fall of the Berlin Wall but saying nothing about Israel’s apartheid wall.

Lack of respect for non-Jewish faiths

AT: Let’s talk about the religious dimension in all of this. How important is it?

SL: The three faiths are all in one place, and Jerusalem is vitally important to all of them. What’s lacking is proper respect. How many people in the West realise that Israel doesn’t allow Muslims and Arab Christians living outside Jerusalem to visit the Holy Places in the Old City?

When Palestine was under British mandate, Christians accounted for 20 per cent of the population. Now, after sixty-one years of hostilities, dispossession and economic strangulation the numbers have been whittled down to 1 or 2 per cent. At this rate there will soon be no Christians left in the land where Christianity was born. The Israelis are waging a religious war that’s designed to disrupt and paralyse Christianity in the Holy Land. It’s part of their attempt to Judaise everything.

Western Christendom doesn’t seem bothered and keeps quiet. Few churchmen, I believe, have any real clue what’s going on there. Shame on them.

AT: Are Western church leaders playing a sufficient role in protecting the Holy Land, its religious history, and its people?

SL: The Catholic Church, which has a significant presence in the Holy Land and runs a number of schools, appears to be fighting the battle alone. Anglican Church ministers I have spoken to are largely disinterested. Yes, their faith is focused on the Holy Land, they teach the Holy Land texts and they deliver sermons on the Holy Land, but what do they really care about it? One morning they’ll wake up and discover that the Holy Land – the central plank to their existence – has been stolen from under their noses.

The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem – the Catholic Church in the Holy Land – does its best, but I don’t think it gets the support it deserves from the Vatican. As for the rest, they could unite and surely do much more. While Israel was planning its blitzkrieg against Gaza’s Muslims and Christians – after blockading and starving them with the British government’s connivance – the Archbishop of Canterbury went swanning off with the Chief Rabbi on a visit to Auschwitz, preaching their joint solidarity against extreme hostility and genocide! The Archbishop talked about the collective corruption and moral sickness that made the Holocaust possible. But where was his concern for the shattered Christian remnants in Gaza? Or for the murdered, maimed and homeless Muslims who, many claim, are being subjected to a ‘slow genocide’? Let’s remember that the Israelis’ killing spree left nearly 60,000 homeless and 400,000 without running water, and they still won’t allow cement and other reconstruction materials to be brought in.

Did the Pope visit Gaza to show solidarity with his frightened and impoverished flock there?

Pious wofflers in their palaces make me sick, when genuine men of God – those in the front line, the priests, the nuns and the imams – risk their lives as they work round the clock to bring comfort to the victims of political greed and aggression.

Inhuman bid to starve a population and wreck their fragile economy

AT: You visited occupied Palestine in 2006 after the landslide victory by Hamas, and again in 2007. Did you get a sense of optimism from the population? Hope for a better future? Or had “the West” and Israel already begun their campaign to ensure that the Palestinian democratic election results would never become a reality?

SL: We were there just after the election in 2006, and the situation was turning nasty. Fatah’s defeat at the polls seemed broadly welcomed, but hopes of a brighter future were scuppered by the West’s childish rejection of the people’s democratic choice, Hamas.

The US and Israel were plotting to bring down Hamas by “starving” the Palestinian Authority and hence all the people it employed and served. It began by axing US-EU aid while Israel stepped up its military attacks on Gaza, killing and maiming, and destroying infrastructure including the only power station – which was built with UK taxpayers’ money, I understand. Israel also kidnapped eight Hamas cabinet ministers and a quarter of the elected members of the legislative council. On top of that, Fatah collaborators joined the plotting against Hamas and organised strikes and protests.

What spurred me to finish the book as quickly as possible was an email from a girl who worked for the Palestinian National Authority in Ramallah. Daily life was getting worse and she hadn’t been paid for over two months because the West had cut the flow of money and Israel was stealing the Palestinians’ own tax revenues. “Some of my colleagues can’t come to work anymore because simply they don’t have money for the transportation. On Thursday we made a protest in front of the entrance of our ministry demanding the international community to end this isolation and asking for our salaries. The mothers are bringing their babies and kids to work everyday because they can’t pay for the kinder yards or the baby sitters….”

Eventually her emails stopped. Presumably she could no longer get to work and access the internet. Her distress was the final straw.

Hamas misjudged the lengths to which pro-Zionist Western leaders would go to undermine democratic processes that didn’t suit their purpose or Israel’s interests. These same leaders endlessly praise Israel for being “the only democracy in the Middle East”… Everyone must be made to understand that’s because they deliberately snuffed out Palestine’s democracy as soon as it was born.

AT: How has this ongoing siege affected the lives of the women of occupied Palestine and how are they coping?

SL: The wrecking of the Palestinian economy has made it impossible for the men to work or do business effectively, and this puts a great strain on their women. They are amazingly resourceful, like the women of London during the German blitz. As a child I remember the courage of my mother and our neighbours as they overcame the hardships of being bombed every night. But Palestinian women face the added danger of enemy troops, tanks and armoured bulldozers.

In Palestinian society women hold many important positions. Even Hamas has a woman minister. Nuns too play a big part among the Christian communities. Not only are they very brave and enterprising, they are great fun to meet.

Visit Bethlehem and Birzeit Universities and you’ll see many stunningly beautiful but very determined young women – Christian and Muslim – working hard for a first-class education and running the gauntlet of Israeli checkpoints and other unpleasant obstacles. On every trip I manage to spend some time at Bethlehem Uni and am always impressed by the sharp minds and outgoing nature of the women students. I salute them.

Palestinians’ voice abroad silenced

AT: Does Palestine have an official voice in the UK, and, if so, how effective is it?

SL: You’d think Palestinians were tormented enough without the added misfortune of being represented in London by the most invisible and silent embassy it is possible to imagine. Little is done to set the news agenda or ensure that the Palestinian case is clearly heard.

In contrast the Israelis are businesslike and proactive. They pump out endless disinformation which is lapped up by the media unchallenged. Their version of events and their definition of the situation is accepted. So it’s a propaganda massacre. Many of us are convinced that the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah has instructed embassies and delegations abroad to not embarrass Israel, and denies them the necessary resources to do an effective job. It’s like a fixed football match. Palestinian ‘strikers’ mustn’t even shoot at an open goal.

Washington-London-Tel Aviv “axis of evil”

AT: What role, if any, does Britain play in Palestine today?

SL: None that I can see. The country that betrayed the Holy Land and its people does nothing. Our navy used to guarantee the freedom of the seas, but now it won’t even protect mercy ships from attack by Israeli pirates. The MV Dignity, for example, was deliberately rammed and nearly sunk in international waters with 16 civilians aboard, including British citizens. Nor will Britain intervene when Gazan fishermen, lawfully trying to feed a hungry population, are fired on.

AT: And the UN?

SL: Please don’t talk to me about the UN, Angie… To quote Major Rufus Cobb in that classic Jesse James film: “If we are ever going to have law and order the first thing we gotta do is take ‘em all out and shoot ‘em down like dogs!”

AT: The UN and most world leaders continue to turn a blind eye to Israel’s crimes against humanity and its occupation of Palestine. What can be done to end what many feel is the slow motion genocide of the Palestinian people?

SL: This is how my good friend Dr David Halpin, a tireless campaigner for justice, describes the situation, and I couldn’t put it any better myself…. ”There is an axis of evil with Tel Aviv at one pole and Washington at the other. In the centre is London where barbarity and treachery is clothed in plummy speech and fine spectacle. Power shuttles backwards and forwards along this axis as busily as the jets carrying the psychopaths to these command centres which bring hell to earth.”

I call it the Axis of Greed, but either will do.

Israel is an aggressive military power bristling with nuclear and state-of-the-art weaponry, funded and equipped by the US and run by what British MP Sir Gerald Kaufman – himself a Jew – calls “a gang of amoral thugs”. That is simply terrifying. Those thugs are already threatening another bloodbath in Gaza, as if their atrocities eleven months ago weren’t despicable enough. If the international community doesn’t get a grip and force Israel to observe acceptable standards of behaviour and conform to international law, we can say goodbye to hopes of building a civilized world.

Lawlessness must have painful consequences for the lawless, not their victims.

As for the Palestinians, their internal squabbles play straight into the enemy’s hands. Other nations would find it easier to intervene positively if Hamas were to carry out a convincing ‘re-branding’ exercise and issue a new Charter that’s more appropriate in tone to the 21st century and their diplomatic ambitions. They now have democratic credentials and a certain amount of sympathy and goodwill among Western citizens. I hope they’ll build on it, not throw it away.

Citizens of the World must take on the Israel lobby

AT: What would be a good starting point for us, the citizens of the world, in our efforts to help the Palestinian people in a real and productive manner?

SL: At citizen level we must continue to expose Israel’s propaganda lies and evil intent. The other side uses every dirty trick under the sun and has produced an instruction manual to teach its embassy staff and its army of cyber-activists how to brainwash Western citizens and their politicians. It’ll be a long haul but the truth will eventually break through.

Citizens also need to tackle Zionist infiltration and rid us of its stranglehold on our political and government institutions. Israel has the British government eating out of its hand. Here’s an example. The other day the minister for foreign affairs, in reply to a question in the House of Commons, said: “Israel is a close ally of the UK and we have regular productive exchanges at all levels, going far beyond relations between governments. Our political relations allow us to address openly issues both of common concern and where we disagree. Most recently, on 27 October, I met the Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon. We will continue to foster this relationship and use it to further the interests of both countries and the wider region.” No prizes for guessing the British minister’s ethnicity.

Israel’s agents of influence are so embedded at the heart of government that signing up to the Zionist cause is regarded as a necessary stepping stone to high office. At election time activists need to identify and expose parliamentary candidates who are involved with the Israel lobby.
We are supposed to be governed in accordance with the Seven Principles of Public Life. Principle no.2 is about “integrity” – holders of public office should not place themselves under any financial or other obligation to outside individuals or organisations that might seek to influence them in the performance of their official duties. The Israel lobby has been powerful enough to ensure this is ignored. Activists need to find ways to re-impose it.

In a sane world…

AT: What happens next, and where do you fit into the scheme of things?

SL: In a sane world the UN would have guaranteed to keep Gaza’s sea border open and provide a naval escort for ships wishing to trade. And it would have declared Jerusalem an international city as stipulated in the partition plan. I hope the UN might still find the backbone to do these things.

The way America is now trying to re-write international law to legitimise Israel’s continuing land-grab and settlement expansion, and the way the US House of Representatives voted 344 to 36 to reject the UN-Goldstone report exposing Israel’s war crimes – in which America is deeply implicated – shows more clearly than ever how US politics is corrupted by the power and influence of the Israel lobby.

As for me, I’m not really an activist. I’m more a commentator. I am, however, involved with a campaign group that is part of a rapidly growing global network. There are many, many others and we are linking up. The Zionists know they have a fight on their hands in the battle for hearts and minds.

AT: Finally, what is your most fervent wish?

SL: That you and I and anybody else can visit friends in Palestine without being molested by Israel’s bad-mannered security officials. We should be able to fly or sail direct, without setting foot in Israel. Citizens of the world must make this crystal clear to the UN…. if we want to wander through Old Jerusalem’s souk, holiday on Gaza’s beach, go fishing with Gaza’s fishermen or talk football with Mr Haniyeh over coffee, it should be none of Israel’s damn business.

AT: Thank you, Stuart.

It was with great shock, sadness, and, yes, anger that I viewed the itinerary of your current trip to the Holy Land, a land beset by the unholiest of human actions.

I am very troubled and hugely disappointed that, as leader of the Catholic Church, you have chosen to ignore the people of Gaza, who, just three months ago, were being bombarded by land, sea, and air by the Israeli military.

Fourteen hundred of their loved ones, including over 400 children, were killed in that 22 day assault, killed without mercy by Jewish soldiers, supported by, in one Israeli survey, a “whopping 94 percent” of Jews in Israel.

Your Holiness, how can you justify this decision to bypass Gaza and its people? How can you reconcile not visiting a devastated people in a devastated land, living under a three year siege, while you are partaking in activities in Israel? You are scheduled to meet with Israel’s two Chief Rabbis. Will you also meet with Gaza’s long-serving Catholic priest, Fr. Manuel Mussallam?

What, I wonder, is the real purpose of your visit?

Certainly it is not to offer comfort, love, and compassion to those that need it most. If this were the reason, you would have stipulated that Gaza and its people be an integral part of your journey.

You would meet with the families, sympathize with the victims of Israeli bombs, missiles, tanks. You would talk to the homeless. You would offer the people of Gaza some much needed encouragement, a spiritual uplifting, perhaps, as they struggle through an economic hardship deliberately imposed by their oppressors.

You would meet with the duly elected Palestinian leaders, Hamas, the only social, economic, and resistance life line that the Palestinian people have ever had. I haven’t seen anyone else helping them, and obviously you have no intentions of helping them either. And that, to me, your Holiness, is truly unacceptable.

You are shunning the people who are most in need of help, most in need of comfort, most in need of love and support.

Can you not find it in your heart to walk amongst them, to reach out to them, to talk to them, to comfort them, to publicly pray for them?

Is this not what Jesus would do? Would Jesus not speak out in the midst of so much pain and suffering?

Are you not expected to display similar compassion and concern?

To turn your back on Gaza and its people will be a moral catastrophe, one that will reverberate throughout the ages. You will leave behind a legacy as the Pope who not only closed his eyes to a slow motion genocide being carried out against the Palestinian people, but also as the Pope who refused to even acknowledge the Palestinian people in Gaza during their time of great hardship.

I strongly urge you to reconsider your decision. The faithful of the world are watching. If, as we are told, there is a God, then he must be watching too.

The people of Gaza are waiting. Please, let this be their “miracle.”

Sincerely,

Angie Tibbs

He later attended Harvard and received his medical degrees, following which he returned to Galilee where he worked as a physician for thirty-five years. He founded the Galilee Society for Health Research and Services, and also the Elrazi Center for Child Rehabilitation, the first such facility specifically designed to serve rural Palestinian children. He is now retired from clinical practice but continues to be an active member of the Galilee Society and serves on the Board of Directors of Elrazi.

Dr. Kanaaneh’s memoirs have been published in a book, A Doctor in Galilee: The Life and Struggles of a Palestinian in Israel, (Pluto Press, June 20, 2008), which gives readers an in-depth look at the struggles he, and the Palestinian minority in the Jewish state, have faced over the last 60 years, and which they continue to face. His first-hand experience of life inside Israel contrasts with ex-US President Jimmy Carter’s contention that the term “Apartheid” only applies to Israeli practices in the Occupied West Bank and Gaza.

I spoke with him via e-mail.

Angie Tibbs: Dr. Kanaaneh, it’s been almost 61 years since Arrabeh was forced to surrender to Jewish terrorists. What is life like today, not just for the people of Arrabeh, but for all Palestinians who are living inside what is called Israel?

Dr. Kanaaneh: A prime feature of our life is our imposed separate residential areas, separate towns and villages. Even in so-called ‘mixed cities’ some Arab slums are separated by concrete walls and barbwire from the better-off Jewish neighborhoods. Our communities, with one or two exceptions, fall in the bottom three centile rungs in the socio-economic grading of Israeli communities.

AT: Tell me about that.

Dr. K: Our towns and villages have fewer internal resources, be it industry, commerce, tourism, or agriculture. And they receive much less financial assistance from common central budgets, only 3-5% of the total.

Sixty-one years after the establishment of the state, one has to be blind not to see the physical differences between an Arab town, even the best-off one, and a Jewish town: pot-holed roads without sidewalks, no public spaces, no private lawns, overcrowding, children playing in the streets for lack of playgrounds, … and the list of signs of neglect is endless.

But these are only the physical symptoms. At a deeper level we constitute an undesirable element, a foreign element in the body of a state whose planners and decision makers define it to exclude us. Israeli Zionist Leaders have variously likened us to a cancer in the body of the state or a fifth column not to be trusted. At best we are seen as a hindrance, a stumbling block for planners to maneuver around in formulating their visions of the future of the state. At worse, we are a demographic ticking bomb to be dismantled at all costs.

The late Rabin was the most tolerant of Israeli leaders, accepting our presence up to a limit of twenty percent of the total population of Israel, a limit we have nearly reached now. That kind of pronouncement by presumed liberal leaders of Israel is ready fodder for incitement by openly racist politicians, the likes of Avigdor Lieberman, an immigrant from Moldova, who legitimized and popularized the concept of transfer to where over two thirds of Israeli Jewish adults approve of it.

How do I feel living in such openly hostile socio-political environment? I feel quite insecure: mentally anguished and physically threatened. I function with an ample reserve of paranoia, constantly on the lookout for signs of harmful intent behind every move by anyone outside my immediate circle of family and friends. When I start doubting those, I will know that I have lost the fight.

AT: Progressive writers, Kim Petersen and B.J. Sabri, wrote a 12-part series entitled “Defining Israeli Zionist Racism” which deals at length with racism inside Israel. What, if any, discrimination and/or racism have you observed and/or encountered?

Dr. K: Discrimination is a built-in part of life and the laws of the country. Remember that what we are dealing with here (and the basic issue of contention in the conflict between Zionism and all of us native Palestinians) is a conflict over land.

As a Palestinian I am disqualified by law from equal access to land ownership or use. This is given a deeper expression in the form of the Law of Return granting any Jewish person anywhere in the world automatic citizenship with all the benefits that accrue with it of access to land, housing, financial and social assistance, and to the symbols of the state while no Palestinian who is not born here can dream of ever becoming a citizen.

Recently laws were passed specifically to prevent our children from marrying other Palestinians and from the right to bring their spouses under the standing laws of family unification applicable to Jewish citizens.

The absolute majority of land we, the Palestinian citizens of the state of Israel since its establishment in 1948, once owned has been confiscated for the benefit of our Jewish co-citizens through a maze of some three dozen laws specifically designed for the purpose. Were it not for the 1976 uprising that has come since to be commemorated as Land Day, we would have lost the remainder. We, nearly one-fifth of the total population of Israel, now own about 3 % of its land. After all, we are dealing with what has been defined by Zionism as ‘the land of Israel’ in an ethnic sense, a definition that excludes us, Palestinians. The last stroke in the continuing saga of disenfranchisement is the requirement from us to pledge allegiance to Israel as the state of the Jews. And once we take such an oath, it would be up to the same racist crowd to define what constitutes a breach of it, a process inevitably leading to our expulsion one way or the other.

Beyond such basic discriminatory laws the whole official system and all Zionist civilian structures, many of which are legally entrusted with state-level powers and duties, are imbued with a sense of messianic zeal. Our experience with such bodies is not unlike a preview of the current practices in the Palestinian Occupied Territories where Palestinians are not allowed to drive on roads for settlers. The multitude of new settlements, named ‘Mitzpim’, or hilltop lookouts, are intended to guard the land in Galilee from us, its indigenous population, and they are surrounded by barbwire and interconnected by special roads that bypass our villages. True, we were not prevented from using those roads, but they were of little use to us because they led only to the various settlements.

At the practical level this translates into set rules and regulations that exempt Palestinians like me from all sorts of benefits if they are not openly anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian. Much of this is practiced under the blanket justification of security, the holiest of all holy cows in the country.

AT: What about employment opportunities for Palestinians, in particular, young people?

Dr. K: A psychologist colleague just informed me that he had gone through two years of theoretical and practical training as a lie-detector expert/operator before he found out that one needs to have served in the Israeli armed forces to qualify for a license.

Our youth, unlike Jewish youth, are exempt from the draft. Positions from which they are disqualified on this basis when they seek employment run the gamut from civil aviation all the way down to the manufacturing of ice-cream.

The worst part of the daily discrimination that we meet with is the fact that much of the final decisions on so many little items are left to the discretion of low-level bureaucrats. These, by and large, have been brought up on a deeply self-centered world-view that sees the world as one of constant struggle between ‘us’-the Jews and ‘them’-the Goyim and considers one’s duty as serving his own people. This, of course, leaves me out of ‘the favors’ many officials consider it their duty to do their clients. Intentional obstructionism is more often what we face.

Another area in which this phenomenon is evident is the differential implementation of the law. Take, for example, the practice of house demolition within Israel. Mind you, we are not speaking here of the savage collective punishment practiced by the Israeli occupying forces against Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. We are speaking of the practice of demolition of homes built without permit within Israel proper.

In absolute numbers there are more illegally constructed structures in Jewish communities, but the demolition is practiced almost exclusively against Arab home owners. The basis for the construction of homes without permit is also rooted in discriminatory practices in the laws of zoning which in many cases have retroactively criminalized all residents of many villages whose existence predated the state, itself. Such “Unrecognized Villages” are frequently the site of home demolitions.

The cumulative end result of all the openly discriminatory laws, the hidden disadvantages, and the differential application of the rules and regulations are clearly seen in comparative figures from officially published data of the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics.

As a Public Health practitioner I can point to the single most telling indicator of the well-being of a community, that of Infant Mortality Rate, or the number out of a thousand infants born in a certain year who die before their first birthday. This statistic regarding the most vulnerable segment of a population reflects such community attributes as the income level, the level of education, the sanitation, etc. etc.

The relative ratio of the IMR between Arabs and Jews in Israel has run at the level of almost exactly 2 since ever statistics were collected on both groups. In the last decade it has been on the rise, a reflection of increasing discrimination. One could look at many other statistics such as the level of poverty, education, housing, etc. and the gap is obvious, but IMR sums it up best.

AT: Do you see East Jerusalem being annexed completely by Israel, and, if so, what will happen to the Palestinians living where they have lived for millennia although the land has been rechristened Israel?

Dr. K: Jerusalem has already been unilaterally and completely annexed by Israel. What many people do not realize is that the city’s municipal boundaries have been expanded tremendously since its annexation to include many formerly independent Arab communities as well as some pristine wilderness turned into housing projects.

Generous funding from Jewish communities around the world and from Western governments made this possible. Yet part of the overall plan is to render the expanded city the Jewish-only capital of the state and of world Jewry. The residents of the old city of about 300,000 Palestinians were granted residence status but not full citizenship in Israel. They are slowly but constantly coerced by various means, legal and otherwise, to evacuate their Jerusalem homes and neighborhoods.

AT: How do Palestinians living in Israel view the ongoing Israeli attacks on their kin in Gaza and the West Bank?

Dr. K: At the personal level I can answer that best by referring you and your audience to my blog where the attack on Gaza featured in more than one posting. To sum that up I can testify to a sense of anger, frustration and impending danger. The daily scenes of war atrocities and destruction are enough to move the conscience of anyone with a morsel of humanity. When the violence is visited on one’s own brethren and next of kin the effect is doubly infuriating.

As a community we reacted by withdrawing into self-imposed isolation in our villages and slum neighborhoods in the cities. There was also an outpouring of donations of food, clothing and medicine though little if any was permitted to enter Gaza. More important, perhaps, were the daily demonstrations in our communities against the carnage, a way for our youth to vent their anger in non-violent ways.

Psychologically, a common theme I have heard expressed by many individuals around me is the fear for our own future.

AT: How so?

Dr. K: The worst case scenario we fear is of the world averting its eyes from our suffering and allowing Israel one day to drive us out of our homes under an imposed news blackout when the next war breaks out with a neighboring country, say, Syria or Lebanon. If the world could sit still and not be moved to protect our brothers and sisters in Gaza from the white phosphorous and DIME bombardments and from the endless air, sea and land assault against them, why would it lift a finger to protect us from summary expulsion from our homes? And such contingency plans for our expulsion are known to exist.

In recent weeks the plot of such conspiratorial theories has thickened even further: In recent years drugs have slowly become available on our streets with little interference from the police. More recently guns and live munitions have become easily available to our youth and the police seem to keep its eyes closed. Older and wiser members of our community theorize that this is done consciously in preparation for the final assault so that the Israeli authorities can claim that an armed uprising is brewing in our community and this would be enough of an excuse for calling in the tanks, the F-16s and the Apaches.

I cite this only as an example of the degree our paranoia has reached as a result of the attack on Gaza.

AT: You mentioned a very real fear is that the world will turn a blind eye to your suffering and allow Israel to one day drive you out of your homes. Who do you see as the strongest supporters of the Palestinian people in their struggle?

Dr. K: At the official level few countries, with the exception of Iran and of South American nations recently liberated form the clutches of USA hegemony, such as Chavez’ Venezuela, openly support the Palestinian people. None of the world’s heavy weights stands behind us. At the individual level, again, few in the world are informed and concerned enough to give our issues much thought. That leaves the fringe activist community in Europe and North America as our best defenders in the corridors of effective power brokerage.

Potentially, the Arab and Islamic masses are a shoo-in as our back-up crowd, but they lack the freedom and democratic means to pressure their dictator presidents, kings and emirs to respond to their wishes. Their countries’ governments mostly follow the straight and narrow path dictated by their American allies with their a’ priori acceptance of all things Israeli.

In the end, we Palestinians, inside and outside historical Palestine, are left burdened with the task of pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps; we are our own best spokespeople and supporters. Despite our spacial dispersal, internal factionalism and disunity, we have so far managed to put our issues on the world’s agenda, albeit belatedly and haltingly. Our resilience and stoicism have proven to be valuable assets in a less-than-caring world.

The Jewish people have elevated their past suffering and future potential to axiomatic heights in the world’s conscience. It is now our turn.

AT: What do you see happening in the future with respect to Palestinians living in Israel? Are you anticipating any improvement or do you expect things to get worse?

Dr. K: It is likely to get worse before it gets better. In the long run, I remain optimistic that general decency and common sense will triumph. The ‘democratic and Jewish state’ that Israel declares itself to be is an oxymoron by definition.

I see it as a three-piece puzzle that has space for only two. One part has to go. So far the Zionist system in Israel has skimped on democracy and successfully hidden the way it has disenfranchised a fifth of its population from the international community. That is no longer possible especially with the rise of civil society organizations and the advent of the Internet.

Also, I do sense a new readiness in the West, and specifically in the USA , to listen to an alternative discourse coming from quarters other than the standard pro-Israel lobby, even if it is still very reluctant to change its stand on ‘minor matters’ such as the issue at hand.

Rightists in Israel who make up the clear majority in Israel have expressed their views clearly in our last elections. Such leaders as the new Israeli Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, seem to share my analysis of the three-piece puzzle. The only difference is that they plan on throwing the Palestinian minority out and thus maintaining a truly Jewish and democratic Israel.

I am gambling on their failure and betting on the commitment of the majority of humanity to justice and equality. In taking such a risk I am counting heavily on the promising views of President Obama, for example.

It may not happen in my lifetime, but I foresee the eventual decline of fascism and fanaticism in the world, including in our region, and the rise of secular humanitarian views and solutions to common problems.

I know many decent people around me, both Jewish and Palestinian, and I would like to think that our shared humanity and decency are slowly contagious. If good people like you keep the world alert to the short-range dangers and help us avoid a calamitous quick end of our combined dreams through the actions of the Liebermens and Netanyahus, then the rise of true democracy in Israel can be expected.

This will ultimately be the nucleus of the one-state solution for Palestine and Israel.

AT: Thank you very much, Dr. Kanaaneh.

The United Nations, the world’s preeminent law-making body, together with its Charter, provides the basis for laws and principles; therefore, people of conscience everywhere look to the UN with hope for upholding its Charter and its pledge to end the scourge of war. As the Secretary General, you, sir, are expected to at least speak words that honour this Charter and its principles.

However, while people of good conscience world-wide are expressing revulsion at Israel’s terrorist attack on the defenseless in Gaza, you are already seeking to minimize war crimes of monumental proportions while echoing the disinformation of Israel and its supporters.

For instance, on January 16th, 2009 the headlines read: “Ban urges unilateral ceasefire in Gaza conflict; meets with Palestine Leaders.”

You did not meet with “Palestinian leaders,” sir. Palestinian leaders are either detained in Israeli or West Bank prisons, murdered by Israeli assassins, or in Gaza, where the world, in its sick attempts to placate Israel, refused to allow them to govern the people who elected them.

You met with traitors, the Palestinian Authority, whose party, Fatah, decisively lost the January 2006 election, yet they refused to go quietly or to work with the people’s representatives. And here you are giving credence to Judas Abbas and his sick collusion with the killers of the Palestinian people, declaring with unbridled audacity, that you “underscore your full support for President Abbas’s leadership.”

On January 21st, 09 you urge all Palestinians to “work to restore one Palestinian government within the framework of the legitimate Palestinian Authority under President Abbas.”

Not so fast, sir. Tell me how do you determine that a party who lost an internationally-monitored election is the legitimate authority?

And since his term as President was to officially end on January 9th, 09, continuing to refer to Abbas as “President” is misleading.

Hamas won 76 of 132 seats in the Palestinian Parliament, Fatah, a mere 43. The people had spoken. Instead of accepting the overwhelming victory of Hamas and urging the nations of the world to abide by the election results, Abbas and friends created one obstacle after another to prevent Hamas from rightfully assuming power. In fact, Abbas, to his everlasting shame, became a pathetic “yes man” for Israel and the United States, and his people and their wishes be damned.

The people of occupied Palestine, sickened by Fatah’s corruption, exercised their democratic right (or so they thought!) and voted for Hamas. However, much of the world cravenly followed Israeli dictates and refused to recognize Hamas and to work with the legitimately elected party in its efforts to bring about positive change in the West Bank and Gaza. The UN, itself, sir, sat idly by while Gaza became the world’s largest concentration camp, strangled to the point of starvation and economic ruin by a brutal, unrelenting occupier.

On January 21st, 2009, you stated that the people of Gaza “were caught throughout this crisis between Hamas’s unacceptable and irresponsible actions and Israel’s blockade and use of excessive and disproportionate military force.”

So you consider defending one’s people and what’s left of their homeland as “unacceptable and irresponsible,” do you?

In just the past three years, Israeli forces have killed many hundreds of people in Gaza. Hundreds more died because Israel wouldn’t allow them to leave Gaza to receive medical care. And on December 27th, 2008, when Israeli forces began their long-planned assault on Gaza and its people, what protection did 1.5 million people have?

Did you see any F-16 bombers piloted by members of the military wing of Hamas? Did you see them launching missiles aimed at vapourizing their defenseless targets? Did you see them driving tanks? Using white phosphorous and other banned, or experimental weapons? Hell, not!

What you and the world saw was a sophisticated assortment of weapons being unleashed with merciless abandon on people whose only means of defence were guns and homemade projectiles. What’s wrong with this picture, sir?

“Use of excessive and disproportionate military force”, you say? Oh, it was a lot more than that, sir, and while you echo the usual catch phrase of the UN and gutless world leaders in describing the pre-meditated slaughter of human beings in occupied Palestine, you seem to have forgotten that under international laws and Conventions, the Palestinian people have every right to protect themselves against the racist, genocidal killers who have been murdering them with impunity for over 60 years.

On January 20th, 2009, you visited Sderot, in the company of war criminal, Ehud Olmert, and to the astonishment of people of good conscience everywhere, you classified “Palestinian militants’ projectiles as indiscriminate weapons and Hamas attacks are violations of basic humanitarian law” going on to describe Hamas’ rocket fire against Israel as “appalling and unacceptable.”

“Appalling and unacceptable”, sir? First of all, it might behoove you to remember that Sderot is built on the ashes of the ethnically cleansed Palestinian town of Naid, whose inhabitants were forced from their homes and lands by Jewish terrorists in 1948. That is appalling, and yet you failed to mention it. Do you feel, sir, that ethnic cleansing (or slow-motion genocide as many call it) becomes acceptable with the passage of time?

Did you suggest to Olmert that Israel remove its inhabitants from Sderot and return it to its rightful owners? I don’t think so.

Before you start prattling about “violations of basic humanitarian law,” I suggest you look at the never-ending Israeli attacks on the people of Gaza and, in fact, all of occupied Palestine. Men, women, children. Israel does not differentiate. There are no bomb shelters in Gaza, are there, sir? There are no warning signals to announce another deadly bomb or missile attack.

And there are no “homemade projectiles” landing in Gaza to cause you to be “appalled,” are there, sir? Nothing so rudimentary for Israel with its latest in war toys — bombs, missiles, tanks, white phosphorous, and who knows what experimental weapons there are in its arsenal. You don’t have a problem with this? Or are you attempting to equate homemade rockets with Israel’s weaponry?

I’m curious, sir. If you consider homemade rockets falling, for the most part, harmlessly into Sderot as “appalling and unacceptable” and “violations of basic humanitarian law”, describe for us, please, how you view the brutal 60-year occupation of someone else’s homeland, with ongoing deadly terror attacks?

If you want examples of “violations of basic humanitarian law”, how about the Israeli war crimes in refusing the Palestinian people the right to exist, to move freely and safely in their own land, to live, work, and play, and to enjoy the basic human, civil, social, and economic rights that I have, that you have?

On January 21st, 09, you state: “I have condemned from the outbreak of this conflict the excessive use of force by the Israeli forces in Gaza. I view the rocket attacks into Israel as completely unacceptable.”

Interesting that the Israeli actions are only “condemned” whereas the rocket attacks are “completely unacceptable”. In other words, you do not trample on the often blurted “Israeli right to defend itself,” (i.e., the aggressor’s right to protect itself from retaliation) so you couldn’t say the excessive force was “completely unacceptable,” could you?

Excessive force? Is that what you call three weeks of continual bombardment of over a million people with nowhere to go, no protection, no one to help them? I call it a premeditated massacre, sir.

You say you condemned the “the excessive use of force by Israeli forces in Gaza.” Are you suggesting that force against the Palestinian people is permissible so long as it is not “excessive”? Is that what you are telling us? That you support the cold blooded murder of Palestinians but not their right to retaliate with what minimal “weapons” they have?

That, sir, is what is completely “unacceptable.”

What has the UN and its Security Council ever done to protect the Palestinian people against continual Israeli aggression? Show me a single instance in UN history where action was taken to protect them from the bombs and tanks and missiles of Israeli terrorists.

Yes, sir. Terrorists. Israel and supporters love tossing that word about, insisting, for example, that Hizbollah and Hamas are “terrorist” organizations. However, over the past 60 years, and during the most recent attack on Gaza, the world has seen Israeli terror in all its horrific ugliness, and we will never forget. Yet, in those 60 plus years, the UN Security Council has never taken decisive action with respect to Israeli war crimes. Oh, there have been numerous resolutions, yes, but all have been ignored by Israel and never enforced by the UNSC. How is this inaction justified?

On January 20th, 09 you “visited the war-shattered Gaza Strip to demonstrate solidarity with the population and assure them of the full support of the United Nations and the international community.”

Excuse me, sir, but where were you and “the international community” for the past three years while the people of Gaza were being kept on a Zionist-imposed diet in the world’s largest concentration camp? Why did you wait until over 1300 of them were slaughtered in three weeks? What did the UN Security Council do? What did the “international community” (with the praiseworthy exceptions of Iran, Malaysia, Turkey and a few others) do? Nothing.

Instead of supporting the Palestinian people and their choice of government, the “international community,” which likes to blather on about “democracy,” choose to ignore the results of the most democratic elections held in the region, and showed its hypocrisy by adhering to the Israeli line and shunning a people and its government. Blackmail at its most repugnant.

What did you do about that, sir? What did you do to remove this criminal siege? You and your Security Council allowed this monstrous crime to continue for three years. Where were the sanctions, the enforced resolutions? The UN Security Council, obviously choosing under pressure from the US and UK which nations it imposes sanctions against, continued to ignore Israeli atrocities, and for crimes against the Palestinian people there has been nothing. How is that inaction justified?

What kind of “support” do you have for the people of Gaza now, sir? Assistance if they denounce their elected officials? The “international community” and the UN Security Council never gave a damn about Palestinian people being tortured, killed, and displaced in their homeland. Their cries for help have gone unheeded for over 60 years. Do you feel enough have been slaughtered now? Do you feel the devastation this time is sufficient? Is that it?

Israel never left Gaza, sir. Oh, there were great made-for-television moments when the illegal squatters were “removed,” but the terrorizing of a defenseless people continued with nightly incursions; assassinations of resistance fighters and others; murders of women, children, the elderly; destruction of homes; curtailment of all rights and freedoms.

And you have the unmitigated gall to refer to the actions of Hamas as “unacceptable and irresponsible actions”?

It might well surprise you, sir, that the Palestinian people have every right to defend themselves against ongoing Israeli terrorism. Yet for over 60 years they have been left on their own, struggling valiantly to hang on to their lives, their homes, their lands. No “world leader” has ever declared that the people of occupied Palestine have a right to defend themselves or that they have a right to exist. Why not?

The crimes committed by Israel since its inception, not only against the Palestinian people, but the Lebanese, and all others in the region, are monumental, but this nation, with more sadistic war criminals than any other on earth, continues to kill and destroy without even a smartly delivered slap to the wrist. Terrorism with impunity. How reprehensible is that?

So, Mr. Secretary General of the UN, when is the UN Security Council going to set up a War Crimes Tribunal to try Israeli politicians, soldiers, rabbis, and all others responsible for the war crimes and crimes against humanity they committed against the people of Gaza?

When is the UN Security Council going to revoke Israel’s membership in the UN for failing to honour its terms of admittance?

When is the UN Security Council going to demand that Israel make complete reparation to the people of Gaza for this monstrous act of death and destruction? Or will others, as per the norm, have to fix what this brutal regime has destroyed while it spends the billions it receives yearly from US taxpayers on more weapons?

Or will this be another Jenin? Another South Lebanon? Another Qana?

This time, sir, this war crime against Gaza and its people will not be swept under the proverbial rug. The good people of the world have seen evil and have recoiled in revulsion. The good people of the world have heard the never-ending litany of outlandish Israeli propaganda. The world is waiting, and watching, and listening. The UN, with its credibility at a minimum, cannot remain silent. People of good conscience will not, cannot, and must not allow it.

Sincerely,
Angie Tibbs