Talitha Mitchell’s (Letters, Echo, May 14), expresses the horror we all should feel at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but Israelis do not deserve to be generalised, stereotyped, or dehumanised by Talitha, any more than Palestinians should be.
She witnessed the abhorrent in-your-face conflicts there, but fails to understand either the bases of the conflict, or the efforts of Israelis and Palestinians joining together to build peace there.
On May 9, over 5,000 Israelis and Palestinians peace activists came together in Jerusalem for the People’s Peace Summit, an alliance of more than 60 peace, reconciliation, and shared society organisations. It was the second recent major gathering of the coalition, and included a speech in support by the head of the Palestinian National Authority, President Mahmoud Abbas. Another group of passionate and outspoken young Israelis and Palestinians, dedicated to working together for a peaceful future, recently held a coordinated bicycle event on both sides of a dividing wall, themed ‘walls will not divide us’.
Talitha is a birth assistant. As I write, an Israeli medical team (of Palestinians and Jews) were fighting to save the lives of a pregnant Jewish woman, the baby, and her husband, who were shot yesterday as they drove to the delivery room. The baby was delivered, but today’s report is the mother has died. Hamas posted ‘the shooting was heroic’.
Here, Israeli peace negotiators Gershon Baskin and Palestinian political leader Samer Sinijlawi, who work together in Israel, have come to Australia for a speaking tour, including events in Sydney (May 28) and Melbourne (May 29), themed ‘Peace is possible, but only if we build it together’.
Perhaps Talitha, who claims she is ‘an international peacekeeper’, should attend. As should the Greens, whose ‘progressiveness’ slogan should be ‘We hated Israel and Jews before it was cool’.
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. 
