Subhi Awad, Mullumbimby
With respect to Wakil and Macklin (Letters, 21 July) the assertion that the Palestinian resistance wants to kill all Jews in the world is wholly untrue.
Hamas was voted into power on their manifesto of seeking a solution based on the ’67 lines and has repeatedly offered Israel truces, which Israel has rejected. The aggressor (Israel) is always the one who rejects peace and instead wages a crippling and life-taking siege against the other.
Nowhere does the Hamas charter say ‘Death to Jews’ or anything similar. You are misquoting something written in the 1980s, before Hamas was even a proper political party, by someone who has since died. It has been updated many times since – this is very disingenuous, thinly disguised propaganda (Hamas in 2017: The document in full: https://tinyurl.com/4ds9j2ym).
History has shown that every human rights abuser will paint their victims as murderous terrorists who, if allowed to be free without brutal persecution, would turn on their oppressors and reveal what monsters they really are. This racist narrative has always proved to be false, from South Africa, Algeria, Tunisia, South and Central America, to Ireland.
It is only by dehumanising, and reducing Palestinians to murderous monsters that Israel is able to justify its brutality, segregation, ethnic cleansing, house demolitions, arbitrary arrests, torture, and plain old murder.
For instance, as a Palestinian, I have no right to a fair trial, and conviction rates by the racist occupation are 98 per cent, I’m not even allowed a translator at my trial. We have a problem with Indigenous deaths in custody in Australia, but in Palestine Indigenous deaths in custody are routine as the horrific state-prescribed torture often kills. We live under military law (while Jews in our country live under civil law), a system of racial domination so severe and brutal that the co-author of the 1973 UN defined Crime of Apartheid, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, describes it as much worse than apartheid in South Africa.
Israel’s knee is constantly on our necks as it says ‘look how they scratch our boots; they are evil monsters’.
Many football teams, like Barcelona, refuse to play in Israel in front of thousands of fans that chant ‘death to Arabs’ at every game. Ben and Jerry’s have pulled out too amidst the hordes of murderous and racist Israeli mobs that terrorise peaceful farmers and shopkeepers, who attack and burn our holy sites, and steal our farmlands, often with full police and army support. They have joined the tide of people and companies, even McDonald’s, who are realising the horrors and brutal racism of the Israeli occupation and refusing to do business with it. In return Israel has dehumanised Ben and Jerry’s calling them Nazis!
As long as there is racial domination and racist persecution, human rights abuse and state-sponsored violence, there will be resistance. Israel must withdraw from Palestine and end the brutal siege of Gaza before there can be any chance of peace. Salam.
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. 
