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.
Solidarity
I support the mass demonstrations around the world in support of the Palestinians’ struggle against genocide and for the right to equality and justice under the banner: ‘From the river to the sea Palestine will be free’.
I have been studying the questions of the Palestinian struggle and the establishment of the State of Israel since 1984. I don’t put much weight on the mass media except for minor factual leaks between formulaic acceptable mass digestible norms. The norm being – the defence of the status quo.
I am not surprised to learn from recent reading of the knockout book by Antony Lowenstein The Palestine Laboratory that the Israeli state has since its inception, and more pronounced today than ever, been in league with the most brutal regimes around the world including the apartheid state of South Africa, and openly embraced by fascists worldwide. Those with a special racial hatred for Jews are in natural alignment with the ghettoization of this ‘race’ to another corner of the world, Palestinians be damned.
The partitioning of the land of Palestine in support of a racial and even biblical supremacist class of people to block any future Reich from committing another genocide, assumes Jewish sensibilities would not be ‘hurt’ or my ‘humanity’ diminished ever again, if only I could accept that the cost would be borne by a whole other people whose identity, authenticity and humanity is that land – the Palestinians.
Looking to the future my humanity is bound up with the restoration of Palestinian rights in all respects. The ‘conflict’ will never be over until the Palestinians’ rights are fully realised.
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. 
