Re: Frank Holden’s letter “Palestinians need to be defended” (The Telegram, May 19).
Frank Holden references how Palestinians describe the creation of Israel as a “Nakba” or “catastrophe,” but fails to acknowledge that such proclamations deny Jews the right to self-determination in their very own state and are antisemitic at its core. The origins of the so-called “Nakba” were caused by a war of annihilation launched against the nascent Israeli state by neighbouring Arab armies.
It was in 1948, that the Arabs refused to establish a state side-by-side with Israel and have since defined Palestinian aspirations as replacing and conquering the Jewish state, viewing its establishment as a failure to achieve the Jewish state’s annihilation.
While Israel successfully fought off five united Arab armies, one of two fates awaited the Jews whose cities were captured by the Arabs: massacre or forced expulsion.
This Arab-instigated war created a dual refugee problem with over 800,000 Jews being forcibly expelled from their homes in Arab and Muslim countries (they were successfully resettled in Israel and other countries, whereas the Arab world forced approximately 800,000 Palestinians to live in squalor in refugee camps, not granting them citizenship, equal rights, etc.).
Make no mistake, since time immemorial the root cause of the conflict is still the Palestinian refusal to accept the Jewish state’s right to exist.
After all, the March of Return rioters advocate that “from the river to the sea” Palestine must be free (or in layman’s terms: Israel must be purged from the Middle East and made Judenrein, a land without Jews).
Nowhere does Frank Holden acknowledge that Hamas officials say that 50 of the 62 Gazans killed in border violence were its own members and terror operatives.
Israel previously said that at least 24 Gazans reported killed at the border on May 14 were terrorists. Hamas and Islamic Jihad published photos acknowledging that 13 of their operatives died in Monday’s violence. Accordingly, over 80 per cent of the casualties were Palestinian terrorists.
As U.S. Ambassador to the UN Niki Haley rightly said: “I ask my colleagues here in the Security Council, who among us would accept this type of activity on your border? No one would... No country in this chamber would act with more restraint than Israel has. In fact, the records of several countries here today suggest they would be much less restrained.”
Hamas hid behind Palestinian civilians while trying to carry out a real massacre of Israeli civilians. Hamas committed a bona fide double war crime which stood in stark violation of the Geneva Conventions.
Mike Fegelman,
Executive director, HonestReporting Canada, Toronto
