(TIME cover from 1982)




Hear Left Turn Magazine founding editor Bilal El-Amine reporting from Southern
Lebanon at: http://www.flashpoints.net

More news from Lebanon and Palestine at:
http://www.leftturn.org/Articles/SpecialCollections/GazaLebanon.aspx

http://ElectronicLebanon.net
http://ElectronicIntifada.net
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/



A LETTER FROM CHOMSKY AND OTHERS ON THE RECENT EVENTS IN THE MIDDLE EAST

Chomsky.info
July 19, 2006

http://www.chomsky.info/2006_07_01_archive.htm#115350344072235040

The latest chapter of the conflict between Israel and Palestine began when
Israeli forces abducted two civilians, a doctor and his brother, from Gaza. An
incident scarcely reported anywhere, except in the Turkish press. The
following day the Palestinians took an Israeli soldier prisoner - and proposed
a negotiated exchange against prisoners taken by the Israelis - there are
approximately 10,000 in Israeli jails.

That this "kidnapping" was considered an outrage, whereas the illegal military
occupation of the West Bank and the systematic appropriation of its natural
resources - most particularly that of water - by the Israeli Defence (!)
Forces is considered a regrettable but realistic fact of life, is typical of
the double standards repeatedly employed by the West in face of what has
befallen the Palestinians, on the land alloted to them by international
agreements, during the last seventy years.

Today outrage follows outrage; makeshift missiles cross sophisticated ones.
The latter usually find their target situated where the disinherited and
crowded poor live, waiting for what was once called Justice. Both categories
of missile rip bodies apart horribly - who but field commanders can forget
this for a moment?

Each provocation and counter-provocation is contested and preached over. But
the subsequent arguments, accusations and vows, all serve as a distraction in
order to divert world attention from a long-term military, economic and
geographic practice whose political aim is nothing less than the liquidation
of the Palestinian nation.

This has to be said loud and clear for the practice, only half declared and
often covert, is advancing fast these days, and, in our opinion, it must be
unceasingly and eternally recognised for what it is and resisted

Tariq Ali
John Berger
Noam Chomsky
Eduardo Galeano
Naomi Klein
Harold Pinter
Arundhati Roy
Jose Saramago
Giuliana Sgrena
Howard Zinn