John Scrivener, Main Arm
Roslyn Goodchild’s letter accused me of wanting to ‘annihilate the state of Israel’. The accusation is offensive and untrue. The editor’s decision to facilitate this sort of defamatory attack is regrettable.
It’s clear from what I’ve written that I’m concerned about the plight of the innocent victims of Israeli war crimes and human rights abuses, concerns that are shared by the international community, as evidenced by numerous UN Security Council resolutions.
It’s the policies and actions of the Israeli government and its military forces that make problems for Israel, not the voices that condemn those actions and policies.
I have nothing against the people of Israel, who are obviously also innocent victims of the violence and tension that afflict their region.
Indeed, I’d like to see an equitable solution that respects the rights and dignity of all the people in that region, irrespective of their race, religion, or nationality. But that won’t happen until the institutions ultimately responsible for the conflict, namely the governments of Israel and the US, stop defying international law and allow truth and justice to prevail.
Roslyn Goodchild is wrong! John Scrivener and I criticise Israel but have never wished for its destruction. We criticise the US, Australia and many other countries but to claim that that is synonymous with wanting their destruction is ludicrous and offensive. She is also wrong in claiming that Gaza is self governing. Israel controls all land, sea and air preventing essential goods like medical supplies and water purification units from entering. Those grossly injured by Israeli sharpshooters, using bone shattering ammunition, are prevented from seeking vital medical treatment outside and end up as amputees. Borrowing from Nazi war strategy, Israeli dieticians have calculated the exact amount of nutrition allowed into Gaza to maintain hunger but to just enable survival. It’s true that Hamas is a brutal ruler but then it conforms to characteristics shared by severely oppressed resistance like the French maquisards in WW II. Israel fostered the birth of Hamas by deliberately censoring left wing, radical literature which was readily available in the West Bank. They wanted Hamas to be illiberal and as fundamentally Islamic as possible so that it could be more easily demonised.