12, August 2014 Terrorism (Response to local letter)
Ralph Bernstein (letter 12 August) seems a trifle confused with the meaning of terrorism. Dial back to our preemptive strike on Iraq in 2003. We launched a highly destructive ‘shock and awe’ attack on Iraq based on bogus claims of WMD’s resulting in the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis (the Lancet estimates $1,000,000) and millions more internally displaced. We helped ensconce Maliki who has engaged in acts of terrorism against the Sunnis and after eight years of increased authoritarianism, overwhelming sectarianism precipitated the current crisis. Our current strategy, dropping bombs in Iraq will surely cause the death of thousands of innocent civilians. Airlifting military and other US personnel by helicopters would be a far better option than indiscriminate bombing.
Bernstein (in his numerous letters) consistently ignores the root cause of the Israeli conflict, namely the colonial style suffocating occupation. Demolishing Palestinian homes, periodically subjecting thousands of Palestinians to collective punishment and tossing hundreds more into Israeli dungeons - are all acts of terrorism. According to Gisha, an Israeli Human Rights group, www.gisha.org, recently revealed that as early as 2007, Israeli Prime-Minister Ehud Olmert, urged the government to maximize the suffering of the Palestinians by “putting them on a starvation diet and severely restricting the delivery of fuel and other necessities.” Finally, Israel’s early para-military Zionist organizations, the Haganah, the Irgun Zvai Leumi and the Stern Gang, committed horrific acts of terrorism and ethnic cleaning against the Palestinians, driving out 750,000 from their homes.
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