I wish to reply to the letter by Mike Fegelman entitled “Hamas in the wrong over Gaza marches” published in the Telegram on May 26.
On April 9, 1948, about 120 members of the Irgun and Lehi Zionist militias attacked the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin. These Zionist militias killed 107 villagers while suffering the deaths of four of their militia members. Approximately 490 villagers fled the massacre, never to return.
The State of Israel was declared on May 14, 1948. The 1948 Arab-Israeli War commenced May 15, 1948 and lasted until March 1949.
These are three historic facts, facts conveniently obscured by an individual who describes himself as representing “Honest Reporting.” I quote Fegelman’s dishonesty: “The origins of the so-called ‘Nakba’ were caused by a war of annihilation launched against the nascent Israeli state by neighbouring Arab armies.”
The Nakba, focused around such events as the April 1948 massacre at Deir Yassin, commenced well before the attack by Arab neighbours and before the birth of the State of Israel. The Nakba was the ethnic cleansing of the soon to be State of Israel by the many Zionist militias active at the time. This ethnic cleansing resulted in the creation of many of the Palestinian refugees.
Fegelman’s convenient obscuring of the truth brings to mind the quote, “The English follow the principle that when one lies, it should be a big lie, and one should stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous.” Which is often paraphrased as “The bigger the lie, the more it will be believed.”
Only by directly confronting such big lies can the dishonesty of Fegelman be relegated to the trash bin where it belongs.
The fingers on the triggers which killed so many Palestinians were Israeli soldiers. A fact even Fegelman cannot distort.
W. T. Beckett
St. John’s