Dear Emma Powell

I saw you saying that Apartheid in Israel doesn’t exist. Shall we let all the institutions and authors who have written to the contrary, know of your fantastic insights? Shall we, subsequently, also advise all university libraries to move books and articles in peer reviewed journals to that effect, to the fiction section?

Have you read the work by Antony Loewenstein, “The Palestine laboratory”, for which he won the Walkley Book Award, which is the Australian equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize? It shows how israel has been testing weapons on Palestinians, in order to sell these as battle tested. Yet, you side with israel. Israel, who is, In the words of Dr Ghada Karmi, the common thieves who live on stolen land, eat stolen fruit, drink stolen water.

You missed the point that the Palestinians didn’t go elsewhere to make like difficult for European Jews. It was the Jews from there who started the bloodshed. And the ongoing NAKBA, as articulated by various authors, including Hanan Ashrawi.

You side with the settlers who caused turmoil in their previous countries. Like the Holodomor in Ukraine, during which millions of Ukrainians died due to the policies of Yagodah, a Jew. He was also Stalin’s right hand man. This made Jews very unpopular in Ukraine.

You also missed the deception in general. Many Israelis changed their names to try and sound Middle Eastern. They also had the habit of deceiving even their benefactors. During the Lavon Affair in 1953, and their bombing of the King David Hotel a few years prior, they would dress up as Arabs, so that Arabs would get the blame. Ditto the attack on the USS Liberty, when dozens of US sailors died.

Not to even mention the terrorism against their benefactors, the British. It is well documented in the PhD by Bruce Hoffman, at Oxford University, 1984. JEWISH TERRORIST ACTIVITIES AND THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT IN PALESTINE 1939-1947. While England was fighting against Hitler, the Irgun and Haganah terrorist gangs would kidnap and murder British soldiers.

Even before statehood, israelis would turn on Palestinians, due to the training and weapons they got from the British.
Yet, you sided with them.

Your stance on Israel made me realise this: if I were a Palestinian, even a Palestinian Christian, you wouldn’t care if my family lost their home, if food had been restricted to Gaza (as pointed out by Ilan Pappe in “GAZA: the biggest Prison on Earth”, as well as Dr Mads Gilbert, the Norwegian anaesthetist who has been involved since 1982).
If someone like Rachel Corrie would try to prevent my home from being demolished, you would, at least implicitly, cheer on Israel for making way for more settlers.

Good luck.