Note from The Echo
The Israeli/Palestinian conflict has been a consistent topic of letter writers to The Echo, even before the latest tragic events.
This newspaper was started when the local media refused to publish complaints of locals about the abuse of police power. Our ongoing commitment to publishing different, sometimes strong opinions, many that we don’t agree with, is why you’ll find the conflicting and contradictory opinions of our readers here. They aren’t our own opinions.
We can’t publish everything we receive, some submissions are not based in fact at all, some are defamatory or too offensive or just too crazy. But while some readers don’t think opinions they disagree with should be given any space in The Echo, we don’t. We publish opinions we disagree with, and we hope everyone will read them and consider their worth, because we believe that this is an essential part of a healthy democracy – to scrutinise ideas even if we choose to discard them.
Free Palestine
On Friday, November 23 as the four-day ceasefire came into effect Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas praised martyrs as ‘the price of freedom, liberation and independence’.
It is for this reason that Hamas has no compunction in using Palestinian citizens as a human shield. They are all ‘martyrs’ for the common goal – the annihilation of Israel.
What did Hamas expect after their barbaric attack including rape, burning, beheading and killing of over 1,200 civilians, and the kidnapping of 240 on October 7? That Israel would not retaliate?
Israel has the right to defend itself but when Hamas, the elected government, stores weapons beneath hospitals and in mosques, fires rockets adjacent to schools and hospitals and places the exits to their maze of escape tunnels beneath residential buildings it is inevitable that innocent civilians will become collateral damage. This is their goal, knowing it will reflect badly on Israel.
Last year the UN Human Rights Office estimated that 306,887 civilians were killed between 2011 and 2021 in Syria due to the conflict. This was Muslims killing Muslims.
Why were there no demonstrations in support of innocent civilians?
Why is it that only when Israel attempts to root out the terrorist group Hamas, which, in its charter claims Israel has no right to exist, do Australians feel the need to demonstrate against Israel and for the Palestinians?
If the Palestinians had accepted the UN resolution of a two-state solution in 1948 as Israel did, there would have been a possibility of 75 years of peace and coexistence.
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. 
