I commend Therapy Today and Eliana Pinto and Martin Kemp for publishing the article ‘To resist is to exist’. I am disturbed however by such a hostile response to a straightforward and honest recording of the current facts in Palestine. Indeed I think the response sheds light on why this problem seems so intractable.

I have travelled to Palestine many times and can testify that the situation in the West Bank is deplorable – far beyond the circumstances that could be outlined in the article. There have been several deaths and injuries of peaceful demonstrators from one village alone. Since the ‘wall’ has separated the villagers of Ni’ilin from their land, international and Israeli peace activists have joined with Palestinians in weekly peaceful demonstrations. The two children mentioned in Kemp and Pinto’s article who died last July were 10 year-old Ahmed Mousa and 17 year-old Yousef Amira. Also killed from the same village were 22 year-old Arafat Rateb Khawaje and 20 year-old Mohammed Khawaje. The latest casualties include an Israeli journalist shot in the chest by the Israel Defence Force with a rubber coated steel bullet, and an American, Tristan Anderson, who is currently in intensive care after a tear gas canister was fired at his head.

When we witness injustice it is essential that we speak out. For those therapists who hide behind ‘neutrality’, or more seriously are in a ‘state of denial’ in the face of overwhelming evidence of the crimes being committed against the Palestinian civil population, I ask you to bravely research the facts. While the Palestinians are not without fault, this is a conflict where there is an oppressor and an oppressed. The United Nations, Amnesty International, Physicians for Human Rights Israel, B’Tselem (an Israeli and Palestinian peace group) and many other credible human rights groups regularly document and publish the facts on the ground. The recent book The Israeli Lobby and US Foreign Policy by Mearsheimer and Walt, describes how ‘a powerful American interest group has created havoc in the Middle East, damaged Israel itself and now threatens an even more perilous future’.

It is not the article in Therapy Today that is political, but the negative response it has generated. The orchestrated denial and defence of Israel’s war crimes with regard to their occupation and ongoing military actions within the West Bank, Gaza and Lebanon, is blatantly political and morally indefensible. Israel commits these crimes because it can, and it can because of the massive lobbying and support it receives from literalistic, messianic, Zionist Jews and Christians from around the world.

George Galloway, having escorted a convoy of aid to Gaza, was recently denied admittance to Canada by the Zionist Lobby where he was to speak at an anti-war conference. The Zionist Lobby in Australia also blocked Jeff Halper (an Israeli peace activist) from speaking at a synagogue in Sydney. The power of the global Zionist lobby is such that we have reached a situation where it is considered almost blasphemous to criticise Israel.

The state of Israel operates above any system of law. The United Nations is powerless to enforce the over 60 resolutions dating back to 1948 condemning Israel’s activities with regard to the Palestinians and demanding the return of stolen land, property and the right of return of displaced people. Since 1967, Israel has illegally occupied the West Bank and Gaza and, as described in the article, makes normal life hell for Palestinians living there. Palestinians are illegally killed and children imprisoned and tortured.

Israel struggles to define its collective national identity by placing itself in the role of ‘victim’ and escalating its violent suppression of the Palestinians. The more Israel strikes out, the more afraid it becomes of violent repercussion – a very destructive cycle. So any threat to Israel is largely created by its own behaviour. It is time for Israel’s apologists to stop crying ‘victim’ and recognise the reality of their own responsibility in nurturing this ‘enfant terrible’ on its destructive warpath to Armageddon. Only a peaceful, mature Israel, in serious negotiations with the Palestinians, has a chance of securing its own existential identity, and in doing so increase the probability of security and peace for us all.

Heather Stroud