MIFTAH
Saturday, 10 May. 2025
 
Your Key to Palestine
The Palestinian Initiatives for The Promotoion of Global Dialogue and Democracy
 
 
 

The Editor
The Spectator
56 Doughty St.
London WC1N 2LL
Fax No: 020 7242 0603
letters@spectator.co.uk
Sent 16 May 2003

Were it not Melanie Phillips writing the article, I would have assumed it was some parody of the Israeli-Palestinian situation. (Original article: http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.php3?table=old§ion=back
&issue=2003-05 -17&id=3100
)

As ever, she trundles out Israelis deaths but treats Palestinian deaths, far greater in number, as an irrelevant footnote, a lesser people. Let's compare figures. Israelis killed 66 Palestinians in April, while only two Israelis were killed. In May so far, Israelis have killed 29 Palestinians, four Israelis have been killed. More than 2,300 Palestinians have been killed since the intifada broke out, while 768 Israelis have been killed.

She is very selective with her use of statistics and examples. The unfortunate Israeli gardener who was killed in the West Bank was also an armed Israeli settler colonising another people's land. She might have mentioned the 18-month-old baby killed recently - but no, he was a Palestinian, so must be guilty.

Could I also bring up the inconvenient matter of Israeli war crimes, and consistent daily violations of the fourth Geneva Convention? These include indiscriminate targeting of civilians, torture, mass punishment, curfews, and by the way, looting of Palestinian artefacts. This Convention, of which Israel is a signatory, was introduced precisely because of what happened to the Jews under the Nazis. These violations all started well before the suicide bombings.

Remarkably, Melanie Phillips claims all Palestinians - all eight million of them - are irrevocably determined to eliminate Israel. She clearly must have spent a long time carrying out such a survey and Palestinians must have, unique in history, a remarkably single, consistent viewpoint. So Palestinians, according to her, will never accept Israel and therefore Israel must perpetually occupy and suppress, kill, torture and steal because it will never be accepted. Yet not one Israeli leader has signed up to a binding document accepting a Palestinian state. Do Israeli leaders accept the right of Palestine to exist? Not some of the Israeli cabinet who wish to expel or ethnically cleanse them from the occupied territories.

Phillips spews out the old saying that Palestinians want to wipe Israel off the map - supported by no quotes, no evidence - yet ignores the very real, documented Israeli settlement process, and theft of Palestinian land that has torn up the remnants of Palestine. Sharon grudgingly may allow autonomy over just 10 per cent of what was their country. Who is eradicating whom?

Chris Doyle
Director

CAABU (Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding)

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