Response to letter writers in The Stanford Daily RE: Israel 1-31-2007

31, January 2007 Response to letter writers in The Stanford Daily RE: Israel
Response to Roei Kashi & Mishan Araujo, Stanford Daily 29 January 2007
Predictably, the pro-Israeli ‘attack dogs’ were busy vilifying Norm Finkelstein, Students Confronting Apartheid in Israel (SCAI), and any other critic of Israel. This is an ongoing strategy of blowing clouds of smoke is an effort to distract the public from the human rights abuses by Israeli settlers and IDF forces. Any legitimate criticism of Israeli polices is always viewed as ‘unbalanced’. No mention is ever made of the illegality of seizing large swaths of Palestinian lands, uprooting thousands of olive trees, bulldozing Palestinian homes, targeted assassinations and utter disdain for international law. 

Perhaps Roei Kashi (Stanford Daily January 29), is not aware that the U.S., with the full knowledge and approval of Israel, shipped large quantities of arms through Egypt to arm Fatah and then watched with glee as Hamas and Fatah fought one another – a common ‘divide and rule’ strategy used by all colonial powers. Kashi claims that Israel does not kill children intentionally. Nothing could be further from the truth. I urge Kashi to read the testimony of former IDF soldiers (part of a growing known as ‘breakingthesilence’), who routinely report of gross human rights violations including the slaughter of women and children. 

Chris Hedges of Harper magazine reported the deliberate targeting of Palestinian children as a favorite sport of IDF soldiers. The theft of tax money by Israel has exacerbated the suffering of the Palestinians, especially the most vulnerable population, the malnourished children. Glaringly omitted from Kashi’s diatribes is any reference to Israel’s Information Center for Human Rights, B’Tselem, which has been highly critical of Israel’s appalling human rights abuses paralleling White South Africa in its comprehensive reports entitled “Land Grab” and “Forbidden Road.”