WHAT’S ON YOUR MIND?
Letter
Gaza: Decades of Atrocities
Dear HIP
In the article Waiting for Answers by Rod Webb (HIP 267) you published a reply by our MP Helena Dollimore to an open letter from Hastings & District Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, calling for her condemnation of Israel’s murder of the Save the Children worker Ahmad Faisal Isleem Al-Qadi and raising other specific questions related to Israel’s atrocities in Gaza. Like most statements by Labour Party MPs, this reply only looks reasonable if you know nothing about Israel/Palestine.
As I write, campaigners are asking: “Where is Dr Hussam Abu Safiya?” This heroic doctor was arrested by Israeli Occupation forces when they stormed the hospital where he worked, and forced his patients, however desperately ill, out into the cold. On 2 January the Israeli Army said they had no record of his arrest. Doubtless he would have disappeared for good if thousands of activists had not been speaking and writing his name.
Friends of Gaza in Hastings are receiving messages from civilians who are starving and injured, sitting shivering in tents that are now flooding, watching their children starve and fall sick with hypothermia while Israel continues to kill relief workers who attempt to provide aid.
The International Court requires that all governments take action against genocide. We are doing politicians’ jobs because they refuse to do them.
Ms Dollimore says that she considers the death and destruction since 7 October last year unbearable. I would like to ask her whether she found any events in the region before that date unbearable? Is it not unbearable that almost every Palestinian in Gaza is already a refugee several times over? Or that most were herded into Gaza when Israel ran them off their own lands and properties elsewhere in Palestine? Or that most of them have seen relatives abducted, beaten or shot by Israeli military, and some will have experienced that themselves? Isn’t it unbearable that young adults in Gaza now were born into a place that’s walled in, kept short of food and clean water, and bombed? That all the while they were growing up, there were Israeli snipers ready to take pot-shots at them, or to arrest them and carry them off into detention illegally even for peacefully protesting?
Ms Dollimore also says she found it ‘harrowing to meet recently with families of hostages still being held by Hamas’. I’m sure it was and I, too, would offer them every sympathy if I met them. I know this, because I have met families of Palestinians being illegally held, starved and beaten in Israeli jails. about which she says nothing, even though over 6,000 (some of them children) have been incarcerated for long periods under “administrative detention”, i.e. without charge, let alone trial.
In recent weeks, Israel has carried its endless campaign of destruction into three other neighbouring countries (Lebanon, Syria and Yemen) and still had enough fire-power to spare to continue bombing civilians in Gaza. There is no opposition in Palestine that has even a remote fraction of the necessary fire-power to have an impact on that. Israel/Palestine is not a two-sided war. It is an illegal occupation by an army that commits daily, deadly, atrocities, and has
done for decades. For all our sakes, please will our government try to stop them.
Kay Green
Letter
In Defence of Israel
Dear HIP
The key issue regarding genocide, as confirmed by a recent article in the European Journal of International Law, is intent. Without specific premeditated intent, there is no genocide but, rather, collateral damage of war. Never has Israel intended to destroy, obliterate or cause any such harm to the people of Gaza. Conversely, the Hamas manifesto states the desire to destroy Israel and remove its existence from the land, driving the Jews out.
There has been genocide in Sudan/Darfur with 400,000 people killed, women raped and millions of people displaced by government and Janjaweed forces. And in Nigeria, where more people die every month than in Ukraine, it’s estimated that jihadist terrorists have killed over 300,000 children and forcibly displaced over 2.9 million (mainly) Christians. Interesting that not a single march, protest or angry letter to an MP seems to have been made against any of the above, which are clearly genocides, but only when Israel defends itself. I wonder why.
Ethnic cleansing is mentioned. This is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, or religious groups from a given area, with the intent of making the society ethnically homogeneous. Suggesting that Israel has been involved in direct removal such as deportation, population transfer, or other methods aimed at forced migration preventing return, is simply untrue. Inhabitants of Northern Gaza were asked to move as the Israeli Defence Force was trying to find Hamas and eliminate them. Since then, many have returned to the area without hindrance from the IDF.
The truth is that Gaza was infiltrated by extreme Islamists whose intention is to cleanse the entire area (from the river to the sea) of Jews, Christians, anyone they see as an impediment to setting up a caliphate for the Middle East. They were bankrolled by Iran whose regime states this as its aim.
Hamas have then perpetrated genocide in Gaza against their own, treating them as expendable. Building tunnels under homes, schools, hospitals; ensconcing command centres under buildings specifically aimed at making the people targets, not protecting them. This is Hamas policy, knowing that when they are attacked there will be deaths of innocent people and that people overseas will take up their cause. It is planned this way, not an accident. The article Waiting for Answers in HIP 267 exactly fell into that trap (in combination with other deeply rooted prejudices), resulting in a completely lop-sided account.
The real genocide was made by Hamas on 7 October, storming into a kibbutz, murdering, raping and burning 1,200 people and taking over 200 hostages, of which one can assume most are dead. No doubt that if Hamas had more trained operatives they would have done more and that, given the opportunity, they would do exactly the same to the entire country of Israel without a blink.
The history of the Middle East is a long, sad one. Carving up of tribal lands by imperialist powers with no real idea of what they were doing has not helped. There were always tragic wars, hatred between tribes, religions and different branches of those religions, adding to the unfortunate mix. The HIP article does not help at all; if anything it makes matters worse, as there are many very bad, uniformed players who are jumping on the bandwagon to stir up even more hatred and division in our society. Without some moderation and honesty, things will only get worse.
Jonathon Bennett
HIP has decided to publish the letter: In Defence of Israel in the interests of free speech. However editorially we do not accept its contentions and believe many are unsupported by facts. In particular, the Israeli Prosecutor’s Office have admitted that no allegations of rape or sexual assault have been filed from the 7 October cross-border attack. Furthermore, allegations of Israeli genocide on Gaza are supported by the United Nations and Amnesty International
Letter
Potential Building Plots
Dear HIP
Further to the article by Ken Davis in HIP 267, A Personal Vision for More & Better Quality Housing, I would like to draw your attention to the half-demolished former laundry site at the top of Harold Road. It has been like this for some years now. It’s most unfair to the householder who lives on the end of the row. Quite a few houses could be built on this site. Whilst writing, the sites of the former Hollingsworth Garage in Braybrooke Road and the former Stamco in Bexhill Road have been derelict for a considerable time.
Rod Evans
From our website
HOUSING THAT’S NEEDED
As always, Ken Davis makes good points, and I agree with him in regard to the sale of council housing. When he mentions that the emphasis is upon housing targets rather than the quality of the housing, I would go further – we need to focus upon the housing need. By that I mean building the homes the local community needs! Often there is an emphasis upon 1-2-bedroom dwellings, rather than the (more profitable) 3-4-bedroom dwellings beloved of developers. If we are to keep our young people here and provide them with a more stable future, we need to provide them with greater opportunity to get onto the housing ladder, whether by buying or renting. More 1-2-bedroom dwellings in the housing stock will do that – not 3-4 bedrooms attracting London commuters and AirBnB owners.
Bryan Fisher
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I wish to contest your “editorial” comments on the post “In Defence of Israel”, which I find quite extraordinary and unnecessary. What you fail to report is that Moran claimed that the failure to gather evidence could be because the victims are dead or unwilling to approach women’s rights organisations.
Your claim that the “Israeli Prosecutor’s Office have admitted that no allegations of rape or sexual assault have been filed from the 7 October cross-border attack” are sourced from Jew and Israel hating sources. I know HiP is a completely biased Antizionist mouthpiece, but I suggest you stick to local politics. I’m fed up of well-heeled white leftists telling its readers what to think, in what is a highly complex regional war.
Just saw this – how unbelievably appalling to be confronted with such rape denialism. Dead victims can’t file charges.