Old, desperate argument (From Harrow Times)

Old, desperate argument

5:19pm Thursday 2nd April 2009

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This is in answer to the letter by Ben, of Kingsbury, published on February 5. I apologise for this very late reply, I was abroad.

He claims that the British foreign secretary Author Balfour promised Chaim Weizmann a home for Jews in Palestine because world Jewry raised millions to help Britain pay for World War One, not just because he thought it a good idea.

Either way, what right had Britain to help install a Zionist state in another people’s land just because it temporarily held the mandate on it?

He says that Palestine should have been divided between Jews and Arabs. But in 1918 Jews comprised only ten per cent of the population and the Arabs did not want a Zionist State installed (US King-Crane Report) so why should the British partition the country against the wishes of 90 per cent of the population? Jews only fled from other Arab countries after Israel had been installed against the wishes of the indigenous inhabitants – it was this that caused the disruption in the region that continues still.

He has the impertinence to ask why don’t the surrounding rich Arab countries allow Palestinians into their countries to improve their lives, he thus wishes to follow Theodore Herzl’s 1897 plan to rid the country of the indigenous population.

The life of the Palestinians would improve by ending the 41-year occupation, giving back all the stolen land and letting those ethnically cleansed and their descendants return to their homeland.

He inevitably ends with the old desperate argument used against anyone discussing Israel’s inhuman treatment of the Palestinians and its ongoing theft of their land, the accusation of anti-Semitism; pathetic.

William Garrett
Pinner View, Harrow

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