You be the judge

Dear Editor:

Galia Golan in her Aspen Institute lecture on Monday, Aug. 25, confirmed everything I have been saying and writing about Israel for the last six years. Dr. Golan is a Jewish woman who has lived in Israel since 1966 and has been on the faculty of the Hebrew University since 1967. She has been active in Peace Now, an Israeli organization dedicated to ending Israel’s occupation of Palestine and was the director of Bat Shalom, a Jewish women’s peace organization.

Dr. Golan believes that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and the building of Jewish towns on land stolen from the Arabs is a threat to Israel’s security and survival as a Jewish state. She also believes that Israel must end the occupation in order to remove the ability of terrorists to use it as a rallying cry for violence against Israel.

When speaking and writing of these issues, I often find that Americans are quite ignorant about the situation in Israel/Palestine. They just have no idea that since 1967 the Palestinian territory, specifically the West Bank, has been under Israeli military occupation, and that each year more land is confiscated to build illegal civilian cities and neighborhoods. Illegal because under the Fourth Geneva convention no nation is allowed to transfer any of its civilian population into a territory under military occupation.

According to Dr. Golan and recently reiterated by Condoleeza Rice, the continuing Israeli confiscation of Arab land in the West Bank for Jewish settlements threatens the peace process and begs the question; does Israel really want peace? Or does it want to eradicate Palestinians from the West Bank and annex the land to Israel, thereby eliminating the possibility of a Palestinian state being created? You be the judge; see “The Iron Wall” on GrassRoots TV; Sunday, Aug. 31, at 5:30 p.m.; Tuesday, Sept. 2, at 11 a.m.; Thursday, Sept. 4, at 8 p.m.

You may not think this issue matters to you, but remember; U.S. support of Israel has been listed by bin Laden and other members of al Qaeda as one of the reasons we were attacked on 9/11. Don’t you want to know why they are so upset about our support of Israel? The Iron Wall will answer that question.

Sue Gray
Carbondale