OrilliaMatters welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected] or via the website. Please include your full name, daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following letter is in response to a news release from Simcoe County 4 Palestine, published Oct. 11 and LETTER: 'One-sided vigils' not helping bring peace to Middle East published Oct. 13.
I'm writing in response to the letter you recently published by Mr.Gordon Levine who took offence at the tone of a press release for the vigil in support of the people of Gaza, Palestine held in Orillia last Saturday, which I attended.
As I write, the Israel Defense Forces has declared all of northern Gaza a 'military zone' forbidden to civilians and demanded the 400,000 remaining residents flee their homes, including all patients and staff inside the last functioning hospital — a certain death sentence for some of the patients. They have already bombed the last functioning bakery in the north.
Israel continues to severely restrict delivery of food and critical humanitarian supplies into Gaza, with no food whatsoever entering the north since the start of October, enforcing literal starvation on the entire civilian population, a war crime in order to drive them off their land. Western medical workers returning from Gaza report that everyone there is sick — the direct result of Israel's yearlong, and illegal collective punishment of the entire population.
In his letter Mr.Levine repeats the tired calumny that it is: 'Hamas’ mandate to rid the world of all Jews (actual genocide)'
A minute's work with the internet determines that the current Hamas charter of 2017 states the “conflict is with the Zionist project, not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine."
By contrast, Israel's governing Likud party's founding document begins:
"The right of the Jewish people to the land of Israel is eternal and indisputable and is linked with the right to security and peace; therefore, Judea and Samaria will not be handed to any foreign administration; between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.
"A plan which relinquishes parts of western Eretz Israel, undermines our right to the country, unavoidably leads to the establishment of a 'Palestinian State,' jeopardizes the security of the Jewish population, endangers the existence of the State of Israel. and frustrates any prospect of peace."
As recently as July 17 of this year according to al Jazeera, "Israel’s parliament has passed a resolution that overwhelmingly rejected the establishment of a Palestinian state, Israeli media reported."
Owen Ford,
Orillia
