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| Version 1 | Version 2 |
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| European positions on Israel and Palestine | European positions on Israel and Palestine |
| (7 days later) | |
| Iain Banks' comparison of Israel to the "racist apartheid regime" in South Africa (A boycott of Israel is all we have left, 6 April) would be laughable were it not so defective both morally and intellectually. A just solution of that conflict – whether along two-state or binational lines – is an issue of great import; but Israel is not an apartheid state. The vote is not denied on racial grounds and the country's population is richly multi-ethnic, with most Jews being of Middle Eastern or African origin as well as the 21% of Israel's citizens who are Palestinian Arabs. | Iain Banks' comparison of Israel to the "racist apartheid regime" in South Africa (A boycott of Israel is all we have left, 6 April) would be laughable were it not so defective both morally and intellectually. A just solution of that conflict – whether along two-state or binational lines – is an issue of great import; but Israel is not an apartheid state. The vote is not denied on racial grounds and the country's population is richly multi-ethnic, with most Jews being of Middle Eastern or African origin as well as the 21% of Israel's citizens who are Palestinian Arabs. |
| As for the Nazi analogy, Banks would find closer parallels among the ranks of Hamas and Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards who, when not denying the Holocaust, are enthusiastic proponents – as was the Palestinian leadership of the 1940s – of completing the job Hitler started. The Palestinians do not face ethnic annihilation. They are the tragic victims of a land dispute that could have been resolved in 1947 had their leadership accepted the UN two-state solution instead of starting a war, or in 2000 had Arafat accepted the two-state solution offered by Ehud Barak. | As for the Nazi analogy, Banks would find closer parallels among the ranks of Hamas and Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards who, when not denying the Holocaust, are enthusiastic proponents – as was the Palestinian leadership of the 1940s – of completing the job Hitler started. The Palestinians do not face ethnic annihilation. They are the tragic victims of a land dispute that could have been resolved in 1947 had their leadership accepted the UN two-state solution instead of starting a war, or in 2000 had Arafat accepted the two-state solution offered by Ehud Barak. |
| Banks defines Israel's treatment of the Palestinians as "one of the defining iniquities of our age". If that is so, then it says more about the moral culture of our age than it does about Israel. Since 1987 the Israel-Palestine conflict has tragically claimed the lives of around 10,000 Israelis and Palestinians, compared with more than 70,000 victims of the Assad regime in the current conflict in Syria. For leftie Guardian-reading peacenik Jews like myself, it is hard not to ponder the question of why Israel faces such obsessive attention compared to her far more frightening enemies, and, on bad days at least, to reach some disturbing conclusions about where it originates. Simon Kovar Barnet, Hertfordshire | Banks defines Israel's treatment of the Palestinians as "one of the defining iniquities of our age". If that is so, then it says more about the moral culture of our age than it does about Israel. Since 1987 the Israel-Palestine conflict has tragically claimed the lives of around 10,000 Israelis and Palestinians, compared with more than 70,000 victims of the Assad regime in the current conflict in Syria. For leftie Guardian-reading peacenik Jews like myself, it is hard not to ponder the question of why Israel faces such obsessive attention compared to her far more frightening enemies, and, on bad days at least, to reach some disturbing conclusions about where it originates. Simon Kovar Barnet, Hertfordshire |
| • We should be grateful to Giles Fraser (Loose canon, 6 April) for spelling out the Christian Zionist position. As European Christians have persecuted European Jews, Palestinian Arabs should be driven from their homes, harassed, humiliated and persecuted for the foreseeable future. Not too much, of course, otherwise we might not be able to feel quite so self-righteous. Julian Edge Manchester | • We should be grateful to Giles Fraser (Loose canon, 6 April) for spelling out the Christian Zionist position. As European Christians have persecuted European Jews, Palestinian Arabs should be driven from their homes, harassed, humiliated and persecuted for the foreseeable future. Not too much, of course, otherwise we might not be able to feel quite so self-righteous. Julian Edge Manchester |
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