Category: Letters

Dear Mother Jones,

The exchange of thoughts after the “Behind the Green Line,” by Chris Fan comes close to the truth without getting to it. The truth people have to wrestle with is: does the Bible give Israel title to the land west of the Jordan River? (And even further) This is the underlying fact of the Zionist ideology.
“This is our land,” the Israeli settler will tell you. “The Palestinians will have to go somewhere else.” So says the true Zionist and his brother, the Christian Right.
They’re totally indifferent to the human rights, legal rights, and moral rights of the Palestinians. The true Zionist, their powerful US Jewish lobbyists, and the Christian right control both the Israeli Govt. and the US Govt. So be prepared to grit your teeth, and look away from the brutal methods coming to get the rest of the Palestinian lands. What a shame for our country to fund and give military equipment so this tragedy of history will continue to happen.

Doug Willbanks

To the Editor,

I can’t believe what Candace Swan wrote. “Fill with food, not hate,” 8-21-02.
In the first place everyone knows who has done about 95% of the destruction. Palestinian water, electricity, cars, homes, businesses and telephone poles purposely damaged. I could write two paragraphs on the destruction. The new national symbol of the Israeli Government ought to be the bulldozer.

It is partly because of the destruction that the Palestinians cannot feed themselves. Cultivated fields torn up. Fruit trees bulldozed. Inability to leave their homes to harvest their fields. Soldiers sometimes not allowing food to be delivered. It is all so terrible and avoidable.

I personally know a Palestinian psychologist. Hatred is not the children’s problem. The Israelis teach that with each killing, beating, or destruction of homes. The trouble with the children is fear and despair. Loss of security. In other words, state terrorism.

Doug Willbanks

Status: Published 09/02/02

Mr. Secretary,

It’s one thing for an ordinary citizen to shoot his mouth off on the Middle
East but when the Secretary of Defense of the United States starts popping
off that’s serious! I’m referring to Donald Rumsfeld’s comments about the
Israeli “settlements” the other day in what he called the “so-called occupied
territories”. Those comments were in conflict with U.S. policy as stated
repeatedly, not to mention international law as generally understood and
United Nations declarations etc. His thesis seems to be that Israel won those
territories fair and square in a war so they are entitled to keep them. He
ignores the implications of that kind of thinking. It would justify the Nazi
conquest of many parts of Europe, particularly those in which they had some
modest claim to hegemony such as the Czech Sudetenland, but maybe France,
Poland, etc. too. I know. “That’s different.” It’s just kind of hard to
explain to us dummies.

Who is running our Middle East foreign policy? You don’t have to answer. I
know. It’s Ariel Sharon – but at least you should be the spokeman Mr.
Secretary of State!

Well I suppose you fellows (Don, Dubyuh, etc.) will have a good laugh over
all this. Trouble is, it isn’t funny.

Albert Doyle, [American, veteran, Bush voter (to my regret – I’d now go for
Nader)]

Dear President Bush –

On August 6th, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld made some disturbing comments regarding Israel’s occupation and its settlements.

At a Pentagon Town Hall meeting, Secretary Rumsfeld stated that Israel has “made some settlements in various parts of the ‘so-called’ occupied area, which was the result of a war, which they won.”
This statement is extremely disturbing on two counts: First, the occupation area is not ‘so-called,’ it is a brutal fact and the entire world acknowledges this. Second, he seems to imply that the Israelis are entitled to the land because they have occupied it for thirty five years as the result of war, a war in which they, in fact, started. This is against international law and U.S. principle. The U.S. fought a war with Iraq because they captured and held Kuwait as the result of military aggression. Might does not make right. We must foster and uphold the principles of international law. Rumsfeld, dangerously, appears to have another view.

Regarding the future status of these settlements, Secretary
Rumsfeld said that “it’s hard to know whether they’re [sic] settlements in portions of the ‘real estate’ that will end up with that [Palestinian] entity that you make an arrangement with or Israel. So it seems to me focusing on settlements at the present time misses the point.” This statement, of course, flies in the face of Secretary of State Colin Powell’s own statements about the terrible impact the settlements have on the prospects for peace. The settlements and their continued expansion are illegal under international law and represent an attempt by Israel to establish permanent facts on the ground in order to prevent a viable Palestinian state. The settlements represent to the Palestinians proof positive that the Israelis are not interested in a serious solution but instead intend to capture as much land as possible through occupation and settlements. Certainly, Rumsfeld must realize this.

I can only take these statements to mean that Rumsfeld himself is not interested in a real solution to the conflict and aligns himself with the right wing Israelis and Americans that advocate, sometimes openly, the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians as the solution. The thought that this man is our Secretary of Defense is frankly terrifying and repugnant to me. I ask that you clearly repudiate his statements.

Sincerely yours,

Peter Miller

Dear Mr. President, Vice President and Secretary of State,

1. Please get on the Defense Department. They have too much to say about our foreign policy. This is not Israel were the Army and the settlers run things with their old comrades who are now in political positions.

2. Secretary of Defense Rumsfelt needs an education with regards the Israeli settlements. They’re totally illegal. There is no doubt that they are also on Palestinian land. Occupied land. They are a main provocation and a more than slight terrorist ongoing threat.

Respectfully, Doug Willbanks

To the Editor, 8-7-2002

President Bush has set the rules. If you are a terrorist, or if you support terrorists, you will be neutralized, destroyed or killed.

Could it be that others see our country as fitting this criteria?

The front pages of the New York Times of 1946 and 1947 describe many acts against the British and Palestinians by Jewish terrorists. In 1948 those same Jewish terrorists carried out their biggest act. They brutally took 78% of Palestine. Drove 750,000 Palestinians from their homes, cities, villages, farms and businesses. With no compensation to them to this very day.

This terrorism still goes on. Over 55% of what is left of Palestine has been illegally confiscated since 1967. Illegal settlements, illegal Israeli-only roads are but a start of the list of wrongs. And yes, our country supports it with over $3,000,000,000 of our tax dollars and military equipment each year.

Doug Willbanks

To the Editor:

Yesterday hundreds of Palestinian woman with their children stood in line
in 100 degree heat waiting to pass an Israeli checkpoint to get home before
the curfew time ran out. Israeli soldiers, who could’ve formed more lines to
assist in this inspection sat in chairs laughing and insulting their captive
guests.
One young Palestinian man who talked back was beaten and taken away. To
what end my friend doesn’t know.

The Palestinian men, knowing time was short, allowed the women and
children to go first. An hour later this came to an end. A bomb had gone off
in a college in Jerusalem. Barbed wire gates were hurriedly brought across
the road. No one else would be allowed to go home to Rallama that day.

Every day, while trying to survive, the Palestinian’s land is slowly
being taken from them. Their freedom was robbed long ago.

Doug Willbanks

Status: Sent

The letter of Hanoch Livneh, “Total destruction sought” (July 13), continues
the outpouring of half-truths and outright falsehoods from the pro-Israel
right wing.

The author asserts the pseudo-geographic sophistry that it is OK to
“transfer” the Palestinians out of their homeland because “there has never
been a Palestinian state.” Yes, after World War I, there were no specific,
internationally recognized borders demarcating “Palestine”; rather, there
were various districts of the just-defeated Ottoman Empire.
Nonetheless, the indigenous people had strong historic ties to specific
villages, cities and regions.

To push the Palestinians out because there are other Arab countries out
there is no different from the Serbs pushing the Kosovars out. We should
call such efforts by their real name: ethnic cleansing.

If Portlanders want to be more in touch with reality, I urge them to look at
the statements of those Israeli reserve officers refusing to fight the war
of the occupation at www.seruv.org.

NANCY HEDRICK

Status: Published July 25, 2002

Dear Editor,

The massacre of fourteen Palestinian civilians, nine of them children, at the hands of a U.S.-supplied F-16 has once again demonstrated the bloody-mindedness of Ariel Sharon. The Israeli Prime Minister referred to this assassination mission as “one of our greatest successes” and he did so well after it was clear that they had killed fourteen and wounded one hundred and forty others. It was in addition perfectly clear to the Israelis that a high-yield explosive ordinance in a high-density population center would have just this result. The strike came after the spiritual leader of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, said they were prepared to stop suicide attacks if Israel withdrew from the West Bank towns it had reoccupied. We will never know if that opportunity was real. Ariel Sharon has once again ensured that the violence will continue.

As citizens, we must call on our government to immediately suspend military ties to Israel until the brutal and illegal occupation is ended. There is no other action that will bring an end to this vicious cycle of violence.

William Seaman

Jews for Global Justice

Status: Sent

Dear Editor:

I am disappointed by your coverage of Israel’s bombing of a Palestinian
neighborhood in Gaza. The attack by a US-supplied F-16 fighter jet killed
15 people, injured more than 140 and flattened half a city block. You
called the bombing a “sharp Israeli response” instead of what it really
was, terrorism. Israel deliberately targeted civilian homes and killed
infants and children asleep in their beds. Is this not terrorism? Or do
you have a policy of only calling Palestinians terrorists?

Sincerely,

Tim Bishopric

Status: Sent