John Scrivener, Main Arm
Danny Wakil (Letters, August 1) calls the Palestinians’ pitiful efforts to defend themselves from Israeli aggression, ‘terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians’. His attempt to blame Hamas is dishonest and hypocritical. During the 2014 Gaza massacre that he mentions, the civilian death toll was 1462 Palestinians and six Israelis.
Homemade rockets, flaming kites and thrown stones are symbolic acts of resistance. They are a symptom of the conflict, not a cause. They’re not comparable to Israel’s military actions in terms of lethality and destructiveness. By any objective measure, Israel is the aggressor and Palestinians are the victims.
Resolution of a conflict can only be achieved by addressing the root causes, which therefore need to be identified and understood. The root cause of the conflict in Palestine is the Zionist project, which has established a fanatically militaristic, nationalistic regime based on an ethnocentric, exclusivist, supremacist ideology.
Danny may say these words ‘don’t contribute to peace but push both sides further apart’. However, I believe silence and wilful ignorance of the situation in Palestine empowers the Zionist regime and allows it to enact apartheid policies with impunity.
John Scrivener’s comment are clearly from someone who has never set foot in Israel, Gaza or the West Bank. You also choose to apologise for the murder of thousands of Israelis by terrorists who have infiltrated prior to Israel being forced to close its border with Gaza. Terrorist bombings, stabbings of entire families in their own homes, children asleep in their beds. How would you react if murderers snuck into your home and killed your family as they slept. In Israel this has been and ongoing reality. The wall and manned border crossings have lessened the chances of these horrific murders. However I should not expect anything close to a desire for truth from a person who spreads anti Jewish propaganda that was peddled in the dark ages and by the Nazis. These are all evident on your Facebook page. Your anti Israel bias is nothing compared to the hatred and lies you spread amongst fb friends. Your opinions have no credibility.
How do you deduce that I “apologise for the murder of thousands of Israelis by terrorists”. That is the sort of bizarre and insulting accusation that I would expect from someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about. If you can’t differentiate between Zionism, Judaism and Jewishness then there is no possibility of having a reasoned discussion with you about the issues that confront Israel.
I consider your comment to be excessively emotive, hostile and personally offensive, it’s the sort of ad hominem attack and character assassination that Zionist partisans routinely employ with complete disregard for civility, honesty or common decency.
I make observations and share information, I don’t peddle opinion or promulgate propaganda. You don’t have to accept my word as truth, you can verify what I say for yourself, as can anyone else. You don’t need to make unfounded and offensive accusations or hurl bitter insults in my direction simply because you don’t like what I have to say about an important international issue.
Marianne Fabri’s accusation that John Scrivener’s comments derive from “someone who has never set foot in Israel, Gaza or the West Bank” is sheer nonsense. Would she claim that one has to visit Auschwitz, for example, to condemn the Holocaust? Perhaps she could specify how anyone publicly critical of Israel has a hope in hell of getting into Israel. Even Jews supporting BDS are barred.
Her claim that thousands of Jews have been killed by terrorists (presumably Palestinian) is baseless. Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem has been tracking Israeli and Palestinian deaths from September 2000.
I suggest she examines their graph which clearly shows “that the overwhelming majority of the deaths are Palestinian, and have been for the almost 14 years since B’Tselem began tracking. Overall, the group has recorded 8,166 conflict-related deaths, of which 7,065 are Palestinian and 1,101 Israeli. That means 87 percent of deaths have been Palestinian and only 13 percent Israeli. Put another way, for every 15 people killed in the conflict, 13 are Palestinian and two are Israeli. (Statistics for the past two months are from United Nations Office for the Coordinator of Humanitarian Affairs.)
THE DISPARITY HAS WIDENED OVER TIME
That number is even more staggering when you consider that there are about twice as many Israelis as there are Palestinians. This means, very roughly, that a Palestinian person has been 15 times more likely to be killed by the conflict than an Israeli person. Of course the conflict impacts Palestinians and Israelis far beyond just conflict deaths, but these statistics help show how utterly disproportionate the conflict has become in its toll” (https://www.vox.com/2014/7/14/5898581/chart-israel-palestine-conflict-deaths). John Scrivener is accurate in his claims and your vilification of him only testifies to your and Zionism’s desperate attempts to whitewash Israel’s egregious crimes against humanity.
People of your ilk think you can make statements, continue your unfounded narrative and quote selective statistics without caring at all about peace in the region. And now I know for sure you have never been there. You just love google, don’t you? The problem is that most people are not as ignorant as you assume. We know our history and statistics. We know that we Jewish people are the Aboriginal people of the land of Israel and Jerusalem has been our capital for well over 3000 years. Nothing you write will change that absolute fact. As long as people whether they be Arabs or any other, refuse to be our partners in peace, reject the most generous of terms including owning the entire West Bank, all of Gaza and half of Jerusalem, and continue to try to drive us from our land through terror, we will resist, we will defend our families, we will not go quietly into the Mediterranean Sea as both Hamas and Fatah have wished for so long. Moreover, it doesn’t matter at all what your ignorant opinion is of us. It means less than nothing to us. We are much stronger people than you. You are anti Zionist (and judging by your FB pages, anti everything) and that is equal to being anti Israel, anti Judaism and anti Semitic. We are very good at criticising ourselves and regularly do so. We don’t need help from “People like you”. Think locally for a moment, if you possibly can find it in your hearts to do so. How do you think Israeli children are treated in our local Schools? They daily endure anti semitic comments and sometimes violence. My son was called a “filthy, money hungry Jew” and then shoved. Luckily he knows how to defend himself and the School Principal forced both the children and their parents to publicly apologise in writing. Your lies and venom hurt children living in the Byron Shire. This is the only reason I bother taking time to answer your rubbish. If you truly want to help Palestinians, donate money like I do. Go over there and help build homes, Schools and medical centres for Palestinians like our children have done through Israeli Government initiatives. Make a real difference toward peace instead of spreading hatred.
Nothing I have written on this subject could reasonably be construed as hostile or personally offensive, unlike the comments and responses I have received from yourself and others who are obviously upset by what I have written.
I think you need to back off a bit and think about what it is you are defending and how you are presenting your point of view.
The conflict in Palestine is a legitimate international concern and I have every right to express my disapproval of the way Israel treats the Palestinians.
That doesn’t mean I’m against Jews or anti-Israel, as you seem to assume.
Casting aspersions against me based on a facebook page that I hardly ever visit is simply childish insult, verging on cyber-bullying.