In response to Yuval Rafaeli (Letters, 24 January).
As a Jewish Australian (child of Holocaust survivors) and ex-resident for over 20 years of Wilsons Creek, I wish to respond to Yuval Refaeli and to tell him how lucky he is, as were my parents. He was able to depart his homeland (Israel) to make a home in peaceful Byron Shire. Is this possible for Gazan Palestinians?
He may wish to complain about how awful it was to live in southern Israel; sirens, rocket attacks a part of life. He claims everything was supposed to be peaceful after Israel disengaged in 2005. He does not mention that Gaza has been under an Israeli blockade since 2005. No one is allowed in or out without Israel’s permission. It’s a tiny enclave half the size of Byron Shire with a population of over two million. Fishermen are shot by Israeli troops if they venture more than a few kilometres from shore. Activists’ boats attempting to challenge the blockade are intercepted and nine activists slaughtered by Israeli troops on the MV Mavi Marmara.
Has he visited the occupied West Bank as I have? There I was able to see the terrible discrimination suffered by Palestinians in what should be their own land. Their aged olive trees cut down, their paltry water allocation, their homes demolished. I walked the main street of Hebron where Jewish settlers throw stinking rubbish on the heads of Palestinian passersby. The lives of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank is not only disrupted by sirens and rocket attacks, it is frequently cut short by the guns of so-called Jewish settlers protected by the IDF, who are occupying the land reserved as a Palestinian state by the UN on the formation of Israel back in 1948.
Really Yuval, if you had to live under these conditions you might be tempted to rebel, challenge your oppression, bring your plight to the attention of the world. Unlike you, the Palestinians of Gaza and the West Bank have no escape, they just want a place to call home and no-one is listening.
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. 
