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| January 2006
OPEN LETTER REGARDING LIBERAL PARLIAMENTARIANS FOR ISRAEL By Gary Keenan In view of the fact that my MP, the Honourable Stephen Owen (Vancouver, Quadra), Minister of Western Economic Diversification and Minister of State (Sport), has failed to respond in a meaningful way to my letter dated 27 July 2005 (in reply to his of 4 May 2005), I have decided to publish it as an "open letter." As well as holding Minster Owen to account for falsely assuring me prior to the last election that he did not belong to Liberal Parliamentarians for Israel, I also provide a critical analysis of some of that organization's statements published on its website. Having been advised by a reliable source that Minster Owen is poorly informed regarding the Israel/Palestinian-Arab conflict, I went into considerable detail. Hence, my letter to him is far from brief. Needless to say, some of what I wrote has been superseded by subsequent events. G.K. ___________________________________________________________________ Honourable Stephen Owen, Minister of Western Economic Diversification and Minister of State (Sport)
Thank you for your letter dated May 4/05 confirming that you are a member of Liberal Parliamentarians for Israel (LPFI.) Curiously, however, your name is omitted from the group's website membership list. I also note that your personal website makes no reference to the fact that you are a member.
To begin with, LPFI is most certainly not as you describe it, "an informal group." As its website boasts, with a membership comprised of some of the Liberal Party's most influential MPs, parliamentary secretaries and senators, it wields considerable influence on the government. Also, your assertion that LPFI seeks to improve communications and public policy towards peace in the Middle East " is contradicted by its name, i.e., Liberal Parliamentarians for Israel. One can hardly imagine a more inappropriate name for a group that purports to seek peace between Israel and Arabs.
To cite a few examples: The 750,000-800,000 Palestinians made refugees during and prior to the 1948 war (as determined by UNRWA, and Walter Eytan, then Director General of the Israeli Foreign Ministry), are described by LPFI as having "fled," but no reason is given. As many renowned historians, including Israeli Jews, have declared, Palestinians were deliberately and methodically expelled or made to flee through force of arms and terrorism, including rape and scores of massacres. Much to Israel's chagrin, approximately 150,000 Palestinians, primarily in the Galilee, were overlooked by the Haganah, Irgun and Stern Gang and managed to evade expulsion. In late 1948, Ben-Gurion wanted desperately to evict them, but his cabinet prevented him from doing so as it feared reprisals from the U.N. whose officials were then in the region. The Palestinians who managed to stay put provided the basis for those making up 20 per cent of Israel's current population. Israel's contention, first espoused in the early 1950s, that Palestinians were ordered or urged by their leaders and the Arab League to flee has long since been debunked. Irish scholar Dr. Irskine Childers was the first to do so. After reviewing the American and British monitoring records of all Middle East broadcasts throughout 1948, he discovered that "[t]here was not a single order or appeal or suggestion about evacuation from Palestine from any Arab radio station, inside or outside Palestine, in 1948. There is a repeated monitored record of Arab appeals even flat orders, to civilians of Palestine to stay put." ( The Spectator , 12 May 1961) His findings have been confirmed by several renowned Middle East historians, including Israeli Jews. LPFI makes no mention of the further 25,000-30,000 Palestinians expelled for the most part just before Israel's 1956 invasion of Egypt's Sinai or the additional 400,000 driven from their homes during and after the war Israel launched on 5 June 1967. Well over 100,000 Syrians and Egyptians were also expelled in 1967. No reference is made to the fact that in 1949, as a precondition for gaining U.N. admittance, Israel pledged before the General Assembly and fellow participants at the Lausanne Peace Conference that as well as Resolution 181, the 1947 Partition (accepted at the conference by the Arab League and the Palestinian delegation as the basis for negotiations), it would comply with Resolution 194 and permit the refugees to return to their homes. These commitments were incorporated into Resolution 273 (11 May 1949) granting Israel membership. Israel is the only country admitted to the U.N. with preconditions. LPFI's position paper also incorrectly implies that the dispossession of well over one million Palestinians by Jewish forces is in effect nullified by the fact that 600,000 Arab Jews immigrated to Israel. The two situations are in no way analogous for a multitude of reasons, including the fact that Palestinians were forcibly driven out of their homeland during a matter of months or days in 1948, 1956, and 1967. Arab Jews, however, gradually immigrated to Israel over a span of nineteen years (1948-67) and not at the point of a gun. The assertion in LPFI's position paper that Arab Jews fled "virulent anti-Semitism in the Arab world" is outrageous and demonstrably false. (I choose not to dwell on the fact that Arabs are themselves a Semitic people.) As Rabbi Sassoon Kehdouri, Iraq's Chief Rabbi for 48 years, proclaimed before the 1946 Anglo-American Committee of Enquiry on Palestine: "Iraqi Jews will be forever against Zionism. Jews and Arabs have enjoyed the same rights and privileges for a thousand years and do not regard themselves as a distinctive separate part of this nation." Chaim Weizmann, Israel's first president, was well aware of the truth and made a point of stating it before the Anglo-American Committee of Enquiry: "I would not like to do any injustice. The Muslim world has treated the Jews with considerable tolerance. The Ottoman Empire [of which the Arabs were a major part] received the Jews with open arms when they were driven out of Spain and Europe, and the Jews should never forget that." The views of Uri Avnery, Israeli Jewish writer, former member of the Knesset, and peace activist with Gush Shalom regarding Arab/Muslim treatment of Jews throughout history are also revealing: "Whatever inanities may be voiced by certain 'experts', there never was any widespread Muslim anti-Semitism, such as existed in Christian Europe. In the course of his fight for power, the prophet Muhammad fought against neighboring Jewish tribes, and therefore
Indeed, during World War II, with the full support of the huge Muslim majority, Morocco's King Mohammed V protected Jewish citizens against the pro-Nazi occupying French Vichy government's discriminatory laws. He issued a proclamation declaring that "Moroccan Jews are my subjects, and my duty is to protect them against any aggression." In 1946, the king was honoured by Rene Cassin, president of the French Alliance Israelite , in a public letter acknowledging the fact that "the life and property of many thousands of Jews were saved thanks to the Sultan's [King Mohammed's] courage and to the support he received from the entire Muslim community in Morocco." Only when the threat to Palestinians became real with the mass immigration of hundreds of thousands of Jews (mainly from Eastern Europe and Russia) whose Zionist leaders, including those who attended the landmark 1942 Biltmore Conference in New York City, made it very clear that their objective was to establish a "Jewish state" in Palestine, did hostility and violence against Jewish citizens emerge in some, but not all Arab countries. The Arab world was very much aware of the fact that for decades, officials with the Jewish Agency in Palestine, including its leader, Ben-Gurion, had been declaring that the creation of a Jewish state could only be accomplished by expelling the native Palestinian Muslim and Christian population. Circumstances for Jews living in Arab countries deteriorated markedly with al-Nakba , the catastrophe that befell Palestinians in 1948, when, as noted above, up to 800,000 were expelled into the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and neighboring countries. The expulsion of 350,000 Palestinians prior to 15 May, when the state of Israel was declared, forced Arab state armies to reluctantly intervene in Palestine on that date in an attempt to stem the massive ethnic cleansing. During the ensuing war, inevitably lost by the outnumbered and poorly armed Arab armies, a further 400,000-450,000 Palestinians were driven out and well over 400 of their towns and villages (including mosques, churches and cemeteries) were systematically demolished to make way for the exclusivist "Jewish State" of Israel that was established in 78 per cent of Palestine, including half of the 1947 Partition Plan's recommended Palestinian state and West Jerusalem. 93 per cent of the land comprising Israel was in fact owned by Palestinians, 80 per cent of whom had been expelled. Fear and suspicion of Jews in Arab countries increased following the creation of Israel. Among other incidents too numerous for me to mention here, this regrettable turn of events was caused by Israel's refusal to live up to its commitment to permit the return of Palestinian refugees; terror bombings against British and U.S. institutions in Egypt in 1954 by Egyptian Jews recruited by Israel; Israel's 1956 invasion of Egypt (in collusion with Britain and France) preceded by large scale expulsions of Palestinians; the devastating spy affair in Syria involving the Egyptian Jew Eliahu Cohen; Israel's repeated and escalating violations of the 1949 armistice agreements, including land seizures in the northern DMZs and massive attacks against Syria and the Jordanian controlled West Bank; and Israel's 1967 attack against Egypt - and thereby, Jordan and Syria, who shared mutual defence pacts with Egypt - that led to what is now a 38 year occupation of the remaining 22 per cent of Palestine (the West Bank, East Jerusalem/the Old City, and the Gaza Strip) and the fertile farm lands and water resources of Syria's Golan Heights. In 1979, as called for in their peace treaty, Israel withdrew from Egypt's Sinai which it had also invaded in 1967. Despite the insecurity and fear Jewish citizens of Arab countries were facing, their Chief Rabbis pleaded with them to stay put, assuring them that the storm would pass. Throughout North Africa, including Egypt, and mainly Morocco, Arab Jews immigrated to Israel (and other countries) due to economic hardships caused by the collapse of European colonialism and inducements offered by Zionist recruiters. As is now common knowledge, the emigration of about 125,000 Iraqi Jews (who abandoned their properties) during the early 1950s was precipitated primarily by a bombing campaign against synagogues and Jewish businesses by agents provocateurs from Israel and a hand full of Iraqi Jews belonging to a group known as The Movement. In 1966, Yehuda Tagar, an official in the Israeli Foreign Ministry revealed his role in anti-Jewish terror in Iraq. Another one of these terrorists was Mordechai Ben Porat, an Iraqi-born Israeli politician, who admitted that in 1950, he had organized attacks against Jews in Iraq, including tossing hand grenades into the Masauda Shem-Tov synagogue , causing numerous deaths amongst innocent Jewish worshippers To quote Israeli Jewish historian Avi Shlaim who was born into an affluent Jewish Iraqi family: " We are not refugees, nobody expelled us from Iraq, nobody told us that we were unwanted. But we are the victims of the Israeli-Arab conflict." ( Ha'aretz , August 11, 2005) Their departure from Iraq was a great tragedy for Jews as they had lived there in peace and prosperity and held positions of great influence since the eighth century B.C.E. Approximately 5,000 chose to stay. In Yemen (a very poor country with a largely uneducated Muslim and Jewish population suffering from a devastating famine), Jews were goaded into immigrating to Israel through "Operation Magic Carpet" which involved a combination of religious blackmail (i.e. it was their "religious duty" to immigrate to Israel) and bribes to the ruling sultan. It is important to remember that according to Zionism, Jews who move to Israel do so as the culmination of millennium aspirations. Immigration to Israel on the part of Jews is seen as a duty. In Israel, an immigrant Jew is an oleh , one who has "ascended" and fulfilled aliyah . When Arab governments - who for obvious and legitimate reasons did not want to provide the "Jewish state" with more manpower and soldiers - tried to curtail Jewish immigration to Israel, they were forced to do so after being severely criticized by Israel, Jewish organizations and Western governments. Pro-Israel advocates, including LPFI, cannot have it both ways.
Nor does the LPFI position paper refer to the fact that as instigated and orchestrated by then Defence Minister Ariel Sharon, at least 2,000 Palestinian children, women and old men were massacred in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps by Israel's Phalangist allies while Israel's occupation forces looked on. With Sharon's full approval, Israel's soldiers provided the Phalangists with night time illumination and bulldozers to dispose of the bodies, served them tea, cookies, and cokes during breaks from their murderous rampage, and prevented the Palestinians from escaping. Israel's 1983 Kahan Report ruled that Sharon bore "personal responsibility" for the Sabra and Shatila massacres and recommended he never again hold public office.
LPFI's website condemns Palestinian terrorism, but makes no reference to Israel's state terror inflicted every day on an essentially defenceless Palestinian civilian population through a brutal and illegal occupation that includes extra-judicial assassinations (resulting in the killing of many innocent civilian bystanders), criminally disproportionate military reprisals utilizing devastating U.S. supplied weapons such as helicopter gun ships, missiles, F16s, one tonne bombs, etc. From 30 September 2000, to 05 July 2005, 3,629 Palestinian civilians, including 683 children, were killed and 28,887 wounded. During the same period 991 Israeli Jewish civilians were killed. From January 1 st to July 25 th of this year alone, 42 Palestinian children have been killed. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Interior, between March 1 st and June 30 th , 2005, during dozens of military incursions into the occupied territories, Israel's forces killed 46 Palestinians, wounded 462 and arrested 1,249. (Source : Imenc.org ) B'Tselem , Israel's human rights group, has just revealed that from the start of the first Palestinian uprising in December 1987, until May 15, 2005, a total of 4,857 Palestinians were killed by Israeli Jews, the vast majority unarmed civilians, of whom 949 were under the age of 18. In the same period, Palestinians killed 1,382 Israeli Jews, of whom 928 were civilians and 131 were children.
Israel's construction of the illegal (as declared by the International Court of Justice) so-called "security barrier" which extends far beyond the "green line" (the 1949 armistice lines) is in fact an annexation wall resulting in the theft of huge portions of the Palestinian owned West Bank, including more of its water resources and most fertile lands. Apart from the tens of thousands already ghettoized throughout the West Bank by the annexation wall, the Sharon government's just announced decision to extend it within occupied East Jerusalem will cut off a further 55,000 Palestinian Muslim and Christian residents from the rest of the city, including the Old City. Israel's absurd contention that the wall in East Jerusalem is a "security" measure was laid to rest once and for all by Haim Ramon, a minister in the government: "[the barrier] makes it [Jerusalem] more Jewish. The safer and more Jewish Jerusalem will be, it can serve as a true capital of the state of Israel." ( The Guardian , 12 July 2005) Since its occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967, in gross violation of international law, Israel has demolished over 2000 Palestinian homes while Jewish settler/colonists have seized more than 70 Palestinian properties within the Old City. Israel has also confiscated 20,000 dunums (5,000 acres) – more than one-third of expanded East Jerusalem's total area – for Jewish settlements. To this date, Israel continues to violate international humanitarian law, the 1993 Oslo accords (Paragraphs 6 and 7 of Article XXIII), the Mitchell Plan (2001) and the Quartet's "road map" (2003) by seizing Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank - all with impunity. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Interior, between March 1 st and June 1 st 2005, Israel confiscated nearly 34,000 dunams (well over 8,000 acres) of Palestinian farmlands in the West Bank for the annexation wall, settlements, settlement roads and military usage. On July 20/05, military orders were issued for Israeli forces to seize large tracts of Palestinian owned land east of Hebron to facilitate construction of the annexation wall. And on July 21, 2005, Prime Minister Sharon called for the expansion of the settler/colonist settlement of Ariel. (Source: Ynetnews ) Another one of Israel's recent violations of international humanitarian law should be noted: On July 5th, 2005, its troops demolished the entire village of Tana, near Beit Furik, Nablus, in the West Bank. Its residents received only one day's notice written on a piece of paper left outside one of their dwellings. According to the U.N., 170 persons were "displaced." Tana was a small farming village in the Jordan valley in an area well known for at least 3,500 years. The village mosque has stood for several hundred years. The criminality of Israel's occupation of lands belonging to Palestinians is perhaps best demonstrated by the confiscation of their water, the region's most precious and scarce resource. As a consequence of this theft which includes aquifers, Israeli settler/colonists consume on average 350 litres per day per person whereas Palestinians receive only 70 litres per person. The minimum daily requirement per person as determined by the United Nations is 100 litres. While Palestinians have little water to drink and not enough for their crops, Jewish settler/colonists frolic in swimming pools and lounge on acres of lush green grass. How utterly immoral! Finding it too expensive and too costly in casualties inflicted by the Palestinian resistance, Israel has decided to end its 38 year military and settler/colonist occupation of the Gaza Strip (2 percent of mandated Palestine and home to 20 per cent of all Palestinians) this August. Under international law, however, Israel will remain an occupier of the Gaza Strip as it will retain control of its borders, air space and access to the Mediterranean Sea. Sharon has also made it very clear that apart from abandoning four run down settlements with a total population of 663 in the northern West Bank, he intends to use his Gaza Strip Disengagement Plan as a smoke screen to enable Israel to annex most of the occupied West Bank and expanded East Jerusalem (including the Old City) in which a total of approximately 380,000 Jewish settler/colonists currently reside. To quote Dov Weisglass, Senior Advisor to Prime Minister Sharon, "the '[Gaza Strip] disengagement' is actually formaldehyde; it supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary so there will not be a political process with the Palestinians...." ( Jerusalem Post , 6 October 2004) While deplorable and inexcusable, suicide bombing attacks against Israeli Jews are a symptom of the problem, not the problem. As any reasonably informed person understands, the root cause is Israel's occupation of Palestinian (and Syrian) lands it invaded in June, 1967, together with its brutalization, humiliation, and dispossession of the near defenceless native people. I remind you that that the first Palestinian suicide bombing targeting civilians in Israel occurred 40 days after Jewish settler/colonist Baruch Goldstein's 1994 massacre of dozens of praying Palestinians in Hebron. It is also important to note that contrary to the rantings of anti-Muslim/Arab media bigots and irresponsible news reports, virtually all suicide bombers are not religiously motivated. Robert Pape, associate professor of political science at the University of Chicago, documented every case of suicide bombing between 1980 and 2004. His findings and conclusions (endorsed by the Pentagon) are revealed in his just published book, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism . According to Dr. Pape, the "core motivating factor behind suicide terrorism" is "a nationalistic response to occupation.... The root cause of [Muslim] terrorism is occupation, not Islam." He concludes that "[n]early all suicide terrorist attacks are committed for a secular strategic goal – to compel" the withdrawal of "military forces from territory the terrorists view as their homeland." This is patently obvious in the case of the Palestinian/Israel conflict Predictably, the LPFI position paper demonizes the late democratically elected Palestinian President, Yasser Arafat, and ignores the fact that as far back as 1979, he had sought a two state solution to the conflict only to be repeatedly rebuffed by Israel. It was President George Bush Sr.'s hesitancy to provide Israel with $10 billion in loan guarantees that forced the Likud government of Yitzhak Shamir to agree to attend the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference which in turn led to then Chairman Arafat and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin signing the 1993 Oslo accords. Unfortunately, after Rabin was assassinated (November, 1995) his successors, Likud's Benjamin Netanyahu (1996-99) and Labour's Ehud Barak (1999-2001), reneged on the Oslo accords (Paragraphs 6 and 7 of Article XXIII) and doubled the number of settler/colonists in the occupied territories, including illegally expanded East Jerusalem. Since Ariel Sharon came to power in 2001, the number of settlements and so-called "outposts" has increased greatly while his government's theft of Palestinian land continues daily with its illegal construction of the Annexation Wall. An examination of what Prime Minister Sharon envisions as a future Palestinian state reveals that it would consist of the Gaza Strip surrounded by Israel's army and only 40 per cent of the occupied West Bank. Israel would annex the remaining 60 per cent which includes the illegally expanded boundaries of already annexed East Jerusalem, including the Old City with its Christian and Muslim holy sites. As well as being fragmented, Sharon's Palestinian "state" would consist of only about 35 per cent of the 22 per cent of mandated Palestine Israel invaded in 1967 (East Jerusalem/the Old City, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip), all of which is illegally and belligerently occupied under international law, including UN Security Council resolutions. In May 2005, the Centre for Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE), a highly respected Swiss human rights group, issued a damning report on Israel's illegal confiscation of land in the occupied west Bank and East Jerusalem. "It spells out that the rate of land confiscations underway and the continued construction of the apartheid wall - which Israel refers to as its "security barrier" - will leave Palestinian territory within the Occupied West Bank and Gaza [Strip] reduced to less than eight percent of Mandate Palestine . Thus a shrunk land mass which renders it physically impossible to turn into a state." (Source: Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions ) Israel's utter disdain for the peace process is well illustrated by that fact that just a few weeks ago (June, 2005), after the Quartet foreign ministers expressed their "support" for and "optimism" regarding negotiations, the Sharon government announced plans to double the number of settler/colonists in the Jordan Valley, especially near the Dead Sea's northern shores. Incredibly, LPFI's position paper also trots out the canard that Arafat rejected a generous peace offer from Prime Minister Barak at Camp David and also unjustly accuses him of having been responsible for the second intifada which erupted on 29 September 2000. Anyone familiar with what actually transpired at Camp David (July, 2000), in East Jerusalem (September, 2000), and at Taba II (January 2001), knows these charges are completely baseless. (See "Camp David: The Tragedy of Errors," by Robert Malley and Hussein Agha, The New York Review of Books , August 9, 2001; The Truth About Camp David: The Untold Story About the Collapse of the Middle East Peace Process by Clayton E. Swisher, Nation Books, 2004, and the Mitchell Report or Report of the Sharm el-Sheikh Fact-Finding Committee , May, 2001, chaired by Senator George Mitchell and commissioned by President Bush.) In the eyes of Washington and Israel, Arafat's crime at Camp David 2000 was his refusal to betray his people by accepting Barak's offer that would have given his people a "state" comprised of about 8.3 per cent of their original homeland with Israel controlling its borders, air space and West Bank water resources; free to intervene militarily whenever it saw fit, and denying Palestinians sovereignty over Muslim and Christian holy sites in the Old City. (Today, as noted above in the human rights report issued by COHRE, the Sharon administration is offering the Palestinians even less.) Because he insisted that Palestinians be granted their rights as prescribed in international humanitarian law and binding UNSC Resolution 242, Israel and Washington designated Arafat an "unwilling partner," a ‘ persona non grata' , in the peace process. When the Likud returned to power under Sharon, Arafat was soon encircled by Israel's tanks and imprisoned in his Ramallah compound until he became gravely ill and had to be flown to Paris for treatment where he passed away. Significantly, LPFI's position paper makes no mention of the fact that Israel rejected an all encompassing peace plan based on the recommendations of Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah known as the Beirut Arab Summit Initiative (28 March 2002) that the Arab League presented to Israel in April, 2002. Accepted wholeheartedly by the Palestinians who had long since agreed to accept a sovereign state in a mere 22 per cent of their original homeland and to share East Jerusalem (the Old City) with Israel as a joint capital, the Arab League proposals call for a formal peace treaty and normalization of relations, including full recognition of Israel as a sovereign state, exchange of ambassadors, trade agreements, cultural exchanges, etc. if Israel complies with mandatory U.N. Security Resolution 242 and international humanitarian law by withdrawing to the borders of 4 June 1967.
These peace proposals put forth by the Arab states and the Palestinians are beyond generous and also demonstrate their sincere desire to reach a just and lasting solution to the conflict. Regrettably for the region and the world, Israel refuses to even consider them. In fact, there is nothing new in Israel's dismissal of the Beirut Arab Summit Initiative. Other peace initiatives that the Palestinians welcomed and various Israeli governments rejected include: The Rogers Plan (1969); The Scranton Mission on behalf of President Nixon (1970); Sadat's land for peace mutual recognition proposal (1971); Carter's call for a Geneva international conference (1977); Saudi King Fahd's peace offer (1981); The Reagan Plan (1982); The Shultz Plan (1988); The Baker Plan (1989); A continuation of the Taba II negotiations (2001); The unofficial Geneva peace initiative of November/ December 2003. And of course, the 1993 Oslo accords signed by Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin that unravelled following the latter's assassination and subsequent return to power of the Likud party under Benjamim Netanyahu (1996-99.) As summarized by Ha'aretz , in his book The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World The constant refrain heard from the pro-Israel camp, including LPFI in its position paper, that Israel is a democracy is not borne out by the facts. A close examination of its political and social system reveals that Israel is best described as an "ethnocracy" under which a citizen's access to democratic rights is determined firstly by his or her religion, and secondly, ethnic origin. Israel is the only country in the world that differentiates between citizenship and nationality. In reality, there is no such thing as an "Israeli" or Israeli nationality, only Jewish and non-Jewish. The term "Israeli" does appear on passports but only to denote citizenship, not nationality. Under Israel's "democracy" fair skinned Ashkenazi Jews, mainly of Eastern Europe and Russian origin, dominate in all sectors. Dark skinned Jews of eastern and Arab origin (i.e., Mizrachim) are beneath the Ashkenazim and at the very bottom are the indigenous Palestinian/Arab Christians and Muslims who constitute at least 20 per cent of the population. Although Arab citizens can vote, they are denied the right to form political parties that peacefully challenge the definition of Israel as a "Jewish State." They are prevented from doing so despite the fact that when Christian immigrants from the former Soviet Union (who pretended to be Jewish) are included, the non-Jewish population is over 25 per cent. Since its inception, Israel has confiscated more than a million acres of land belonging to its Arab citizens, i.e., in addition to land confiscated from expelled Palestinians who are now external refugees. While no citizen of Israel is allowed to purchase land (97 per cent of which is "owned" by the Jewish National Fund), Jews are allowed long term leaseholds up to 49 years whereas Arabs are only permitted to lease land for three years. According to the U.S. State Department's report on International Religious Freedom, "Arabs in Israel...are subject to various forms of discrimination [and the government] does not provide Israeli Arabs...with the same quality of education, housing, employment opportunities as Jews." About one-quarter of the per capita amount allocated to Israel's Jewish towns and villages is spent on Arab towns and villages for infrastructure and education. Furthermore, the average gross salary in Jewish cities and towns is nearly twice the average monthly wage in Arab communities. Just recently, the Knesset passed the "Citizenship Law" which denies Arab citizens the right to bring a spouse from the occupied territories or any Arab country to live in Israel. Jews, of course, can immigrate to Israel from anywhere in the world and automatically become citizens. The net effect of this apartheid law and other restrictions applied to Israel's Arab citizens is well expressed by Israeli Arab writer and Knesset Member, Ahmed Tibi: "...dutifully defining the state [of Israel] as 'Jewish and democratic,' ignores the fact that in practice 'democratic' refers to Jews, and the Arabs are nothing more than citizens without citizenship." ( Ma'ariv , 1.6.2005) Ronnie Kasrils, minister for intelligence in the current South African government and also of the Jewish faith, is eminently qualified to comment on Israel's "democracy." In an article recently published in The Guardian he and his co-author concisely sum of the plight of Israel's Palestinian/Arab citizens: "The Palestinian minority in Israel has for decades been denied basic equality in health, education, housing and land possession, solely because it is not Jewish. The fact that this minority is allowed to vote hardly redresses the rampant injustice in all other basic human rights. They are excluded from the very definition of the 'Jewish state', and have virtually no influence on the laws, or political, social and economic policies. Hence, their similarity to the black South Africans [under apartheid]." ( The Guardian , 25 May 2005) The views of two of Israel's leading Jewish intellectuals regarding their country's "democracy" are revealing: Ilan Pappe, professor of political science at Haifa University: "[Israel's] political system [is] exclusionary, a pro forma democracy - going through the motions of democratic rule but essentially being akin to apartheid or Herenvolk ('master race') democracy." Adi Ophir, philosophy professor at Tel Aviv University: "...the adoption of the political forms of an ethnocentric and racist nation-state in general, are turning Israel into the most dangerous place in the world for the humanity and morality of the Jewish community, for the continuity of Jewish cultures and perhaps for Jewish existence itself." I remind you that the U.N. Security Council, the U.S. State Department's Legal Advisor, the International Court of Justice and the Israeli Supreme Court have repeatedly declared the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip (and Syria's Golan Heights) to be "belligerently occupied" by Israel. Hence, Israel's occupation of these areas is in violation of international humanitarian law, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (to which all U.N members must adhere) and the Fourth Geneva Convention (signed by Israel and Canada.) Like former apartheid South Africa, Israel would have long ago been suspended from the United Nations not only for failing to fulfill preconditions for admittance, but also for its gross violations of international humanitarian law. It has evaded suspension only because of Washington's protection, including its veto of 39 Security Council resolutions. Surely you must be aware that in its recently released report on human rights abuses, Amnesty International accuses Israel of committing "crimes against humanity" and "war crimes" in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. The report lists "reckless shooting, shelling and air strikes in civilian areas...and excessive use of force" as well as unlawful killings, torture, extensive and wanton destruction of property, obstruction of medical assistance, targeting of medical personnel and using Palestinians as "human shields." Amnesty also accuses Israel of offering impunity to soldiers and settler/colonists who commit crimes against Palestinians. In its just released 126 page report (July, 2005) entitled "Promoting Impunity: The Israeli Military's Failure to Investigate Wrongdoing," Human Rights Watch (HRW), the largest U.S.-based international human rights monitoring organization, accuses Israel of fostering "a climate of impunity in its ranks by failing to thoroughly investigate whether soldiers have killed and injured Palestinian civilians unlawfully or failed to protect them from harm." HRW's report states that "since the current Palestinian uprising began in 2000, Israeli forces have killed or seriously injured thousands of Palestinians who were not taking part in the hostilities." The report also documents how Israel has failed in its legal obligation to investigate civilian deaths and injuries that result from the use of lethal force in policing and law enforcement contexts as well as in combat situations. Accusations against Israel by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are echoed by B'Tselem. In its report issued on 27 June 2005, B'Tselem accuses the Israeli occupation army of whitewashing the murders of hundreds of innocent Palestinian civilians. The report pointed out that "[from September 2000, to 27 June 2005] the Israeli army killed as many as 1,722 Palestinian civilians who played no part in the hostilities , including 536 children." B'Tselem also said that the Office of Military Prosecutor initiated investigations into no more than 108 cases of controversial shootings and that the perpetrators were indicted in only 19 cases. Only two Israeli soldiers were convicted of unlawfully killing Palestinians. In two other cases, soldiers were convicted of intentionally vandalising Palestinian property. In its annual report regarding human rights released on 22 July 2005, the British Foreign Office declared that Israel's violations of human rights in occupied Palestinian lands "arouses Britain's deep concern." The report emphasizes that the practices of Israel's troops, the separation [annexation] wall, and Jewish settlers' conduct have caused Palestinians great suffering. It also states that "Britain stresses, in this regard, that Israel has violated the Geneva 4th Convention and the International Human Rights Declaration," and expresses deep concern over the limited accountability Israel faces for its practices in the occupied lands. During a recent interview with the Nazareth newspaper Kul al-Arab , Shulamit Aloni, Israel's former education minister, described Israel as "a racist state that commits war crimes and resorts to terrorism worse than that employed by the Palestinians." She also charged that “Sharon and the Israeli leadership always try to make Israelis believe the lie that the Palestinians want to throw us to the sea.... In fact, we are the ones who commit war crimes against humanity, and I hope Sharon will face justice.” (Source : Ynetnews ) Has it ever occurred to you or other members of Liberal Parliamentarians for Israel that Palestinians are the only people in modern history living under a brutal, let alone illegal, military occupation forced to negotiate with their occupiers? No one expected France or Holland to bargain with their German occupiers during World War II and Kuwait was not forced to negotiate when it was occupied by Iraq in 1990. Do you and other members of LPFI consider Palestinians to be a lesser people? Are they somehow excluded from international humanitarian law? Your assertion that being a member of LPFI "in no way prevents" you "from maintaining that human rights and respect for the individual is a goal to be applied globally" is simply not credible. How can you believe in human rights and respect your fellow human beings while belonging to an organization that lobbies and spreads misinformation and disinformation on behalf of a foreign state that occupies other peoples' lands and flagrantly violates hard won and most precious international humanitarian law? (As I am sure you realize, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Fourth Geneva Convention came into being due to the horrors perpetrated against Jews and others by Hitler and his thugs before and during W.W. II.) Furthermore, through contributing directly to the suffering of Palestinians by condoning and/or ignoring Israel's violations of international humanitarian law, LPFI is acting against the best interests of Canadians. I vividly remember our telephone conversation that took place a few days before the last election. I assure you that contrary to what you suggest in your letter, you did not reveal that you are a member of LPFI. In fact, when I asked if you were, you replied in the negative. Thus, having no use whatsoever for the so-called Conservatives, I voted "strategically" for you rather than the NDP. Nor, contrary to your assertion, did you make any reference to not being "a signatory to any of the group's policy documents" because you are "a member of Cabinet." Indeed, I find your statement is this regard absurd as Irwin Cotler, Guiseppe (Joseph) Volpe, James Scott Peterson, and Carolyn Bennett are members of Cabinet and also signatories to LPFI's position paper Canada & the Middle East . For the record: As well as yourself and those mentioned above, other known members of LPFI are Ministers Lucienne Robillard and Jacques Saada; Senators Jack (Jacob) Austin, David Smith, Art Eggleton, Michael Biron, Isobel Finnerty, Leo Kolber (who has been appointed to a national security advisory committee and is also a board member of the Canada-Israel Committee as well as the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy - CIJA, an Israel advocacy organization consisting of influential and wealthy Canadian Jews with easy access to the Prime Minister), Richard Kroft, Marie - P. Poulin, Jerry Grafstein, as well as Parliamentary Secretaries Marlene Jennings, Bryon Wilfert, and MPs Anita Neville, Susan Kadis, Russ Powers, Judy Sgro, Mario Silva, Bernard Patry, and Raymonde Folco. According to Vancouver's Jewish Independent , there are in fact a total of eighteen MPs who are members of LPFI. The Canadian Jewish News reported that “Liberal Parliamentarians for Israel is now an official caucus committee. In the new cabinet, unveiled by Martin last month, members of the pro-Israel caucus were given significant new positions…." (" Liberal MPs work to change UN voting pattern on Israel") Furthermore, five of the twelve members of the Cabinet Committee dealing with Global Affairs and Canada/U.S. Relations belong to LPFI. They are Jacob Austin, James Scott Peterson, Irwin Cotler, Guiseppe (Joseph) Volpe, Jacques Saada, and Parliamentary Secretary Bryon Wilfert. (Source: PMO ) Clearly, as evidenced by the fact that its members comprise more than one-fifth of the Cabinet (8 out of 38), LPFI exerts enormous influence on behalf of Israel within the government. Under no circumstances will I vote for a political candidate who in order to gain favour with a specific group of voters, not only refuses to denounce a foreign occupier state's war crimes and crimes against humanity, but also belongs to an organization that serves as its apologist, advocate, and protector within our government. Hence, at the risk of possibly helping the Conservatives win the Vancouver Quadra riding, I will be voting for the NDP in the next election. In conclusion, let me assure you that mine is not a voice in the wilderness. A recent poll and study commissioned by the Canadian Jewish Congress discovered that the more Canadians learn about the Israel/Palestinian conflict, the more pro-Palestinian they become. My views are rapidly becoming those of average Canadians. You and your fellow politicians in Ottawa would do well to bear this in mind. I look forward to your response.
Gary D. Keenan
Other Articles by Gary Keenan: The Truth Regarding the 2000 Camp David Summit |