A Letter from 18 Writers including three Nobel Prize recipients

A Letter from 18 Writers including three Nobel Prize recipients

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060828/petition

John Berger
Noam Chomsky
Harold Pinter
José Saramago
Eduardo Galeano
Arundhati Roy
Naomi Klein
Howard Zinn
Charles Glass
Richard Falk
Gore Vidal
Russell Banks
Thomas Keneally
Chris Abani
Carolyn Forché
Martín Espada
Jessica Hagedorn
Toni Morrison


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
Defense (!) 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
allotted
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 recognized for what it is and
resisted.

PS: As Juliano Mer Khamis, director of the documentary film Arna's
Children, asked: "Who is going to paint the 'Guernica' of Lebanon?"

John Berger
Noam Chomsky
Harold Pinter
José Saramago
Eduardo Galeano
Arundhati Roy
Naomi Klein
Howard Zinn
Charles Glass
Richard Falk
Gore Vidal
Russell Banks
Thomas Keneally
Chris Abani
Carolyn Forché
Martín Espada
Jessica Hagedorn
Toni Morrison

This letter has been printed in newspapers throughout the world,
including Le Monde, El País, The Independent and La Repubblica.



This article can be found on the web at:

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060828/petition