[Peace-discuss] Berger letter on Israel

[C. G. Estabrook]

[The following open letter, dated July 19, was circulated by art critic 
and author John Berger.  Among its signatories were Noam
Chomsky, Tariq Ali (in residence at UIUC last year), Nobel Prize winner 
playwright Harold Pinter, Nobel Prize laureate José Saramago, Booker 
Prize laureate Arundhati Roy, American author Russell Banks, author and 
playwright Gore Vidal, and historian Howard Zinn.  --CGE]


     The latest chapter of the conflict between Israel and Palestine 
began when Israeli forces abducted two civilians, a doctor and his 
brother, from Gaza. An incident scarcely reported anywhere, except in 
the Turkish press. The following day the Palestinians took an Israeli 
soldier prisoner - and proposed a negotiated exchange against prisoners 
taken by the Israelis - there are approximately 10,000 in Israeli jails.


     That this "kidnapping" was considered an outrage, whereas the 
illegal military occupation of the West Bank and the systematic 
appropriation of its natural resources - most particularly that of water 
- by the Israeli Defence (!) Forces is considered a regrettable but 
realistic fact of life, is typical of the double standards repeatedly 
employed by the West in face of what has befallen the Palestinians, on 
the land alloted to them by international agreements, during the last 
seventy years.


     Today outrage follows outrage; makeshift missiles cross 
sophisticated ones. The latter usually find their target situated where 
the disinherited and crowded poor live, waiting for what was once called 
Justice. Both categories of missile rip bodies apart horribly - who but 
field commanders can forget this for a moment?


     Each provocation and counter-provocation is contested and preached 
over. But the subsequent arguments, accusations and vows, all serve as a 
distraction in order to divert world attention from a long-term 
military, economic and geographic practice whose political aim is 
nothing less than the liquidation of the Palestinian nation.


     This has to be said loud and clear for the practice, only half 
declared and often covert, is advancing fast these days, and, in our 
opinion, it must be unceasingly and eternally recognised for what it is 
and resisted.



     Tariq Ali
     Russell Banks
     John Berger
     Noam Chomsky
     Richard Falk
     Eduardo Galeano
     Charles Glass
     Naomi Klein
     W.J.T. Mitchell
     Harold Pinter
     Arundhati Roy
     Jose Saramago
     Giiuliana Sgrena
     Gore Vidal
     Howard Zinn