Did we ever say “if you condemn the Nazis you should also condemn the British government”?
Yesterday’s dopey letter, from S. Chor, in the South China Morning Post:
I do not support Hamas, which some countries have labelled a terrorist group. But Palestinians have been oppressed and killed over the past 75 years and few have spoken up for them. Both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have said what Israel has done to Palestinians during this time is apartheid.Even former US president Barack Obama says in his book A Promised Land that most countries considered Israel’s continued occupation of the Palestinian territories to be a violation of international law and that Palestinians “lacked self-determination and many of the basic rights that even citizens of non-democratic countries enjoyed”.
He also points out that US politicians receive significant donations from the Jewish bipartisan lobbying organisation American Israel Public Affairs Committee. This explains why the US continues to support Israel.
I am not disputing that the Hamas attack was cruel. However, the world only tends to pay attention when Israelis are killed but not to the fact that Palestinians have been killed over the past decades, not to mention their continued oppression. Human rights groups have long described Gaza as an open-air prison. Its people have no powerful defender. In an excellent graphic, The New York Times showed the sharp contrast between the Israeli and Palestinian death tolls in past conflicts.
Supporting a free Palestine does not mean supporting Hamas. The same goes for supporting the Jewish community while condemning the Israeli government.
Some Israeli newspapers have been critical of their government. An op-ed in The Times of Israel argued that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been propping up Hamas so that an independent Palestine cannot be formed.
If you condemn Hamas, you also have to condemn the Israeli government for what it has been doing over decades and what it is doing now, which include violations of international law.
Recent attacks on the Gaza Strip in the name of fighting Hamas have led to the destruction of entire neighbourhoods, a huge shortage of food, water, fuel, first aid supplies and medication; the displacement of over a million Palestinians, and horrific injuries and deaths of civilians, including children, journalists and UN workers, none of which can be justified by the attack on Israel on October 7.
We must support a ceasefire now.
S. Chor, Pok Fu Lam
My quick comment, in the “moderation queue”:
Support Palestine DOES mean support HAMAS. They are the government and they're popular, by all polls.
"... shortages of food, water, fuel, first aid...". BUT HAMAS, by its own admission has tunnels full of these supplies. They're they government. It's up to them to supply to their Gazan citizens. But they keep for themselves, to they can kill yet more Israeli women and children. Meantime, their leadership live in 5-star hotel luxury in Qatar.
No, these are not the people we (at least I) wish to support and there's not equivalence here. No need to "criticise Israel" as balance of criticising HAMAS.
A ceasfire only allows HAMAS to regroup and prepare for its next atrocity.
What does it mean to say "you have the right to defend yourself" and in the next breath say "you must lay down your arms".
This is an extential and life-defniing issue. I'm on the side of those who Don't target children, who don’t bake babied, who don't rape and kill women, who don't capture hostages and torture them, who don't use human beings as shields, who don’t act as barbarous savages. I’m in favour of THEM. The ones who DON’T do all that. And don’t get all “moral relativist” about it. It’s not that hard.
