Perhaps a few corrections, in ‘editors notes’ on letters and articles, may go to supporting less conflicting, and more informed, understanding of the Israel/Palestine/Gaza situation.
While I appreciate Daniel Berg’s letters, ‘Judaism is a well-respected religion with millions of practitioners worldwide’, his ‘Israel is a state or country run by a comparatively small clique of adherents to a clique or cult within Judaism called Zionism’ is incorrect.
The facts are, that after six million were killed by Hitler, approximately half of the world’s Jews now live in Israel (and globally numbers have not reached pre-Hitler).
And ‘Zionist cult’ – the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, is on the ancient, pre-Bible and Biblically-named, Mount Zion. The wall is not a ‘cult’s’ abandoned relic, it is the 2,000-year-old earliest cultural and religious remains of the main Jewish temple of the Jewish country of Israel, after the Roman colonisers attempted to demolish Jerusalem, and rebuild it dedicated to Roman gods 2,000 years ago.
Jews have continued to live there for 3,500 years.
And there was a Jewish Star of David-badged Zion Corps unit of the British army, formed in 1915 of Jews from Israel and Egypt, that fought at Gallipoli.
Zion, used by Jews as an alternative identity for Israel, is also mentioned in the Bible, and is not a new identity cult of Jews, (whereas Palestinian is a recent term using the Roman colonisers’ name for the country).
Modern Israel was a part of the regional decolonisation process that handed back sovereignty to those that lived there, which was enacted by the UN, which included a Zionist’s proposed Jewish governance over a multicultural, and multi-religious country on a small part of the original land of Israel.
But the UN enactment was rejected two months prior to the UN handover by surrounding Arab states, who attacked Israel.
Jihadists have continued to attack Israel for the last 78 years, which is the significant issue driving the conflict.
Regarding the Gaza flotilla, both in a recent Echo article, and on their fundraising site, the organisers say is ‘breaching the illegal blockade’.
The Israeli sea blockade is legal under international law.
The flotilla organisers know that, as they took Israel to the UN after the first flotilla was stopped, and the UN declared the blockade was lawful. They then took it to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for a review, but the ICC saw no legal impediment to the UN ruling and declined the application.
It is the flotilla’s attempt to breach the blockade which is illegal, and the flotilla members will all be legally arrested. While the flotilla gains focus as a humanitarian action, it is overlaid by this lie to falsely generate hate and fundraising.
Elections are coming to Israel in October, with four separate Arab parties, and Arabs standing within predominantly Jewish parties for election.
More Arabs have been elected in Israel than Aboriginals here, and Arab parties have been a part of Israeli governing coalitions – and these Arabs are predominantly Zionists that support being Palestinian Israelis.
But the right-wing government has eased rules for Israelis to buy land in the West Bank, and the capacity of a two-state solution is receding.
So if you want a just peace, and a stop to both the Israeli and jihadist violence, learn some history of what’s driving the conflict, and get on board with the Jewish and Muslim Israeli peace groups, and stop falsely conflating Israel with an illegal colonial settler colony, like Australia is, and bring discussion back on the facts of the conflict, and not by guilt by propaganda.
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. 
