Re letter Israel’s Attack on Gaza Indefensible (the News, February 11):
I support Anne Chilibeck of Haines Junction on her letter to the News. Her letter was well researched.
Because Canada is a strong supporter of Israel, following the USA’s lead, news of any massacre inflicted on Palestinians or Lebanese by Israel is somewhat suppressed in Canada. Finding out what really is going on in the Middle East today involves in-depth searches on the internet, studying Israeli news outlets as well as Arab news outlets, and other sources.
It would seem our federal government and those who control the media prefer that Canadians don’t understand fully the other side of the story, the Palestinian side in this case.
The fact is what is happening in the Middle East today is even affecting us here in the Yukon. Check out the security controls for outgoing passengers at the Whitehorse airport.
These security controls are mainly in place because of Islamic radicalism coming out of the Middle East and, more recently, Pakistan. This Islamic radicalism did not just happen. It has been provoked over the last 90 years on Arab and Islamic countries since the fall of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War - initially by Britain and France carving up the Middle East to suite themselves at the Paris Peace Talks in 1919. And, since the 1950s, the USA has been trying to dominate the Middle East for national security purposes, (read uninterrupted flows of Middle East oil to the USA and the guaranteed security of Israel). Indian Kashmir, is another story.
The current state of Israel was formed by the United Nations in 1948, and is now, indisputably, a country. I am certainly not disputing it here in this letter.
However, the current state of Israel was carved out of Palestine, a predominantly Arab and Islamic land where in 1922, 78 per cent of the population were Palestinian Muslims, 11 per cent Jewish, 9.6 per cent Christian, total population 757,182 according to the British Mandate Census of Palestine, 1922.
The Palestinians were never consulted about the carving up of their lands, and all Arab and Islamic nations never voted in favour of the creation of a new state Israel in Palestine, a land in fact both Jordan and Syria wanted for themselves.
The current fighting by the Palestinian factions against Israel, regarded by Palestinians and the majority of the Islamic world as occupiers, is due to the fact the Palestinians are trying to hold on to what land they have left. This is about 18 to 20 per cent of what they originally had in pre-1948 Palestine. Israeli settlers are continually moving into internationally recognized Palestinian territory, that is the West Bank. Besides these facts, there are a multitude of other problems.
The Canadian government and the Western world in general show complicity by remaining silent as Israeli settlements continue to grow into recognized Palestinian territory. Palestinians, all of whom have been made refugees by the creation of Israel, choose not to simply roll over, but fight for their land by suicide bombings and crude rockets. They have been forced into this desperation.
Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, was democratically elected by Gazans in 2006 by landslide elections, something the USA, Canada and Israel have failed to achieve recently.
Still the Western world calls them terrorists because they fight by whatever means they have to protect what land they have left, like trapped and desperate wild cats.
A hypothetical case comes to mind. If the Paris Peace Talks of 1919 had designated the Yukon to be the homeland for Israel, which was then actually passed into a state of Israel by the United Nations in 1948, without the consent of First Nations or other Yukoners, First Nations and Yukoners in general may have gone along with plan as long they were not made into refugees, not evicted from their traditional territory and land, with full acceptance into Israeli society. But almost total evictions, almost full refugee status and only partial acceptance for a very few is exactly what has happened to Palestinians over the past 61 years, and actually before that time.
In my opinion, the Israelis from the very beginning should have come to a mutual arrangement with the indigenous Islamic Palestinians to live peacefully together, just as we in the Yukon, (and Canada) are living peacefully with First Nations.
Canada should tell Israel to fix this mess the Yukon-Canadian way, period.
Clive Aspinall
Whitehorse