Editorial, August 6, 2010
Inconvenient truths
LAST Thursday, the Arab League gave Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas the green light to engage in direct talks with Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
Last Friday, Hamas passed its verdict on the decision, firing a rocket into a residential neighbourhood in Ashkelon. In case the message wasn’t clear, the following day further missiles rained down on Sderot, one hitting a children’s hydrotherapy rehabilitation centre. That was the group’s response in deed. In words, senior Hamas member Fawzi Barhoum labelled the Arab League’s endorsement of negotiations “a political sin”.
As if to further to dampen any cause for optimism in the wake of the hesitant steps being taken towards a resumption of the peace process, Syria’s President Bashar Assad weighed in on Sunday with a statement declaring “Chances to achieve real peace in the region are disappearing, and the possibility of war and conflict is increasing.”
Islamic Jihad, meanwhile, declared its intention to resume its campaign of suicide attacks on Israel from the West Bank.
And on Monday, rockets were fired from the Sinai peninsula towards Eilat, while Tuesday saw a fatal clash on Israel’s northern border.
The world is faced yet again with what Al Gore might term “inconvenient truths”. Inconvenient in that the belligerence of Israel’s neighbours and their hostility towards peace do not accord with the popularly held fallacy that it is the policies of the Jewish State that are to blame for the Middle East’s ills.
Far easier to peddle pro-Palestinian propaganda than to face up to the facts. Ignore the evidence of the rockets fired from Gaza and the consequent need for the sea blockade to prevent more weapons and more deadly arms being smuggled into the Strip. Ignore not just the threats of Islamic Jihad but the past evidence of their suicide bombing campaigns and the consequent need for the security barrier. Ignore, in short, the right of Israel to defend itself and protect the lives of its citizens.
We have, of course, been here before, with any possibility of progress undermined by those who will only settle for the wholesale destruction of Israel. But it’s not just the Jewish State threatened. Those intent on triggering a fresh cycle of violence also have Mahmoud Abbas in their sights. The inconvenient truth facing the Palestinian President is that he cannot afford to prevaricate. Those forces determined to undermine his credibility — both abroad as a man who can deliver peace, and at home as a man who can offer his people a state of their own — have stepped up their campaign in recent days. And unless he seizes the initiative, the prospect of a settlement and potentially his own future will once again be ¬†cast into the shadows.
Your voice at the UN
WHAT hurts the victim most,” wrote Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, “is not the cruelty of the oppressor, but the silence of the bystander.”
Seven weeks ago, The AJN launched a letter-writing campaign on behalf of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. Urging the United Nations Secretary General to step up his efforts to secure the release of the young IDF officer, this was an opportunity for each and every member of the Australian Jewish community to heed Wiesel’s words; not simply bemoan Gilad’s fate and lament the inhumanity of the terrorist entity that is holding him hostage, but to take action on his behalf, to raise their voice in protest and to send a loud and clear message to the international community, stating ‘We are not, and will not, be silent. We are not, and will not, be bystanders. And the world must not be silent or stand by either.’
In the days and weeks that followed, more than 3000 letters flooded into our office from across Australia. A further 1000 were mailed to us from overseas, as Jews on the other side of the globe learnt of our campaign and decided they too would not be silent, they too wanted their voices to be heard. And just this week, as the letters continued to arrive in our office — from Sydney, from Melbourne, from Adelaide, from Perth and from Brisbane — we were notified that another 1000 copies had been downloaded from the internet and signed by members of the Jewish community in Florida in the United States.
Will the message be heard?
On Friday, all those letters that we had received in time were personally delivered to Australia’s Ambassador to the United Nations in New York. Guaranteeing they would be passed to the relevant personnel in the Secretary-General’s Office, Gary Quinlan hailed the initiative as both “important” and “remarkable”, insisting the feelings expressed would certainly have an impact. Tangible evidence of public concern — the letters you signed — ¬†lend weight to the efforts of those diplomats who lobby on Gilad’s behalf at the UN.
Tangible evidence that Gilad has not been and cannot be forgotten; tangible evidence that Australian Jewry will continue to speak out until he is released.
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