Dear President Carter,
I am writing to express my profound appreciation for the moral courage you have shown in focusing the public spotlight on the appalling plight of the Palestinians in your latest book, “Palestine Peace Not Apartheid”. Predictably, many public figures, especially high-profile Democrats, were critical of your use of the word apartheid. However, ‘apartheid’ is a very apt word to accurately describe the appalling injustice, squalor, and brutal occupation endured by the Palestinians. Sadly, these politicians were more in mortal fear of offending the all-powerful Israel Jewish Lobby and its possible impact on their re-election prospects than advancing the cause of peace and justice.
The diagram of the occupied territories with its numerous check points and apartheid wall, outlined in your book, encapsulates the enormous injustice heaped on the Palestinians by their colonial oppressors, the Israelis. It is unconscionable that the tools of oppression are financed by our tax dollars. This brings up a question which perhaps you hitherto omitted in your public discussions of your book, namely do not oppressed people have a fundamental right to resist oppression and occupation? Indeed the same question is applicable to our immoral and illegal occupation of Iraq.
With all due respect, I do fundamentally differ with your characterization of Israel being a democracy where all its inhabitants, Jews and Arabs enjoy the same basic rights. This myth was pierced very effectively by Susan Nathan, an Israeli Jew who is on worldwide crusade to expose the sad plight of Arab Israelis, in her widely acclaimed book, ‘Other Side of Israel’.
A few additional examples of the glaring disparities of Arabs and Jews living in Israel.
All Jews throughout the world enjoy all the privileges of citizenship in Israel – a privilege denied to the indigenous people, the Palestinians, For example, Avigdor Lieberman's, Minister in charge of "Strategic Threats to Israel, was born in a remote province of the former Soviet Union but was bestowed with all the rights of full Israeli citizenship under Israel’s law of return, when he moved to Israel as an adult.
Incredibly, Israel is not a state defined by its inhabitants but Jews worldwide. Its land is owned by Jews worldwide not by its inhabitants. Non-Jews are forbidden from access to state land which they formerly owned.
Israel's newly revised nationality law, similarly, prohibits Palestinian citizens of Israel from marrying Palestinians from the occupied territories and living with their spouses in Israel. The same law does not apply to Jewish Israelis who marry Jewish settlers living in the occupied territories. Interestingly, similar legislation had been proposed in South Africa at the peak of Apartheid, only to be rejected by that country's Supreme Court. Israel's nationality law, however, was endorsed by Israel's High Court just this year.
I have included several letters I wrote to the local press on the subject of Israel’s relentless persecution of the Palestinians, including one acknowledging your recent publication. Once again, my sincere thanks for your noble efforts to bring about a just and lasting settlement in the simmering Middle East conflict.
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