letter to the editor

Re: Canada´s Lone Gaza Vote
http://www.thestar.com/comment/article/570481

By insisting on balancing our censure of Palestinian and Israeli actions, we contribute to the impression that this is a conflict between two more or less evenly matched states who share similar levels of responsibility for the ongoing violence. This is patently not the case. The Palestinians are stateless; they have been suffering under an illegal blockade for months, subject to abuse and interrogation by Israeli soldiers. To pretend that Israel invaded Gaza in response to Hamas rocket attacks is either extremely naïve or an outright lie. Israel has been slowly squeezing the life out of the Palestinian territories; this invasion is merely the latest and most violent example of an ongoing genocide.

The Star´s defense of Canada´s shameful vote against a UN resolution that condemned Israeli for aggression in Gaza, human rights violations, and targeting civilians, is pathetic. What else do you call it? We are witnessing the massacre of a captive civilian population. It is not a war, or a conflict as it is sometimes called, between two legitimate aggressors. If that were the case, Hamas would be justified in launching rockets at Israel; we would call these attacks self defense and not “terrorism”. Nor is it the selective assassination of Hamas political and military targets, as if murdering soldiers and politicians in another country could ever be justifiable, less still when their children and neighbours die in those attacks. The Israeli invasion of Gaza is state terrorism; it should be unequivocally condemned.