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Follow Us on TwitterLavinia Moore (SA) responds to articles in The Advertiser re Israel and Egypt 31May11 June 1, 2011
“I refer to your editorial of the 28th May “Israel’s security paramount in peace process” and the article in today’s paper “Egypt ends four year blockade of Gaza”.
Over the last few months we have watched footage of courageous-some may say foolish- and ordinary people take to the streets of their cities and towns asking for what should be theirs by right because they too are human beings.
We hold our breath and wait for the repression that we fear from police states. On a few wonderful occasions the people have prevailed. On others the dictators, tyrants or foreign occupiers/invaders have struck back with disproportionate force in an attempt to cow the people and remind them that they are not among the lucky ones who are entitled to be free. Or to have their land liberated.
The so-called leaders of the west have been slow to offer the support and assistance that these people ask for. The so-called free media of the west has tended not to treat all peoples equally as if some have a legitimate right to peace and freedom and others do not, and that some ought to be liberated from tyrants, but others should be compliant and submit.
Why is it that your paper, for example, chooses to side with an occupation regime that commits daily human rights violations, and at the same time it lavishes praise on yet another American president whose praise of liberty and human rights is tempered by callous and self-interested beliefs about who does and who does not deserve freedom, whose sovereignty is to be respected and whose is not, and when the rule of law ought to be complied with and who is given an exemption card?
Your editorial rightly sees the so-called “Arab spring” as a positive movement offering the possibility of freedom and democracy. But not, it seems, one that Palestinians will be permitted to join.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights does not say ‘this declaration applies to everyone except the Palestinians’.
The Geneva Conventions do not say that the rules of war exempt Israel and the USA from having to comply with them.
If I were to read , in your paper, an article on Palestine Israel that began with the headline question ‘ How can a Middle East peace process ensure Palestine’s security?’, then I would accept that finally you are seeing the situation as it really is.
It is Palestine that needs to be more secure. It is Palestine that needs to be liberated. It’s the Palestinian people who are not free.
But unfortunately the reality is that your paper, along with most of the west’s media together with our government and many others who kow-tow to the USA, will never have the courage to speak truth to power.
And the truth is that Palestinians need to become free.
‘Free, free at last’ a great man once said about his own people’s hope.
Why not also for the Palestinians?
They are people too”
Thank You.
