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.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
