“The tragedy of the people of Palestine is that their country was
“given” by a foreign power to another people for the creation of a new
state. The result was that many hundreds of thousands of innocent people
were made permanently homeless. With every new conflict their numbers
increased. How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle
of wanton cruelty?It is abundantly clear that the refugees have every right to the
homeland from which they were driven, and the denial of this right is at
the heart of the continuing conflict. No people anywhere in the world
would accept being expelled en masse from their own country; how can
anyone require the people of Palestine to accept a punishment which
nobody else would tolerate?
Israel has expanded by force of arms. After every stage in this
expansion Israel has appealed to “reason” and has suggested
“negotiations.” This is the traditional role of the imperial power,
because it wishes to consolidate with the least difficulty what it has
already taken by violence. The aggression committed by Israel must be
condemned because every expansion is an experiment to discover how much
more aggression the world will tolerate.
We are frequently told, “We must sympathize with Israel because of
the suffering of the Jews in Europe at the hands of the Nazis.” What
Israel is doing today cannot be condoned, and to invoke the horrors of
the past to justify those of the present is gross
hypocrisy. “
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