Please complain to the Daily Express and Virginia Blackburn for an awful commentary in the July 25 edition entitled "This shooting must not be allowed to stop tough policies", in which she fully supports Israel's repression and the mythology that surrounds it.
Write to:
expressletters@express.co.uk
martin.townsend@express.co.uk (editor)
virginia.blackburn@express.co.uk
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Extracts from the article with Arab Media Watch comments in brackets:
"We could also do a lot worse than take advice from the country that has more experience of this kind of problem than any other - Israel. It has been fashionable on the Left to decry Israeli reactions to suicide bombing as atrocities in themselves, without ever bothering to consider what it is like for people living in a society with suicide bombers in their midst".
"Unfortunately we no longer have to imagine, as we, too, are living that horror. Therefore, it makes sense to follows Israel's approach to security. Sniffer dogs and spot searches on the transport system may delay journeys but they will have to become a way of life".
(Unfortunately Israel's approach to security isn't limited to "sniffer dogs and spot searches". Israel uses security as a pretext for occupying another people by force, dispossessing them, killing and injuring them, colonising their land, stealing their resources, controlling their everyday lives, discriminating against them, and building a barrier on their land which the International Court of Justice has deemed illegal. Blackburn totally fails to mention these violations of human rights and international law. Just last month, on June 22, Human Rights Watch said: "The Israeli military has fostered a climate of impunity in its ranks by failing to thoroughly investigate whether soldiers have killed and injured Palestinian civilians unlawfully or failed to protect them from harm." On June 27, Israeli human rights organisation B'Tselem said this "has led to a trigger-happy attitude, and the extensive harm to Palestinian civilians." Is this the kind of "security" we want in Britain?)
"On the subject of Israel, now might be the time to offer an apology to that country, the only true democracy in the Middle East."
(Democracy is supposed to be all-inclusive, thus Israel isn't a democracy because it discriminates against and disenfranchises its Arab citizens, who make up 20% of the population. According to Israel's electoral law as outlined in the Knesset (parliament) website, for an Arab party to be allowed to participate in elections it has to accept "the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish people".)
Israelis have been regularly denounced for every attempt made to put a stop to suicide bombing, while routine anti-Israeli offensiveness has become a kind of alternative anti-Semitism in some quarters. It is, thank goodness, no longer acceptable to come out with anti-Jewish sentiments and so some people routinely slate Israel instead".
(Again we see the tired old argument that criticising oppressive Israeli policies is anti-Semitism in disguise. Perhaps Blackburn can explain that to the many Israelis and Jews who oppose those policies. This is as ridiculous an argument as saying opposition to apartheid was anti-white, opposition to the Vietnam war was anti-Christian, or anti-colonialism was anti-Western.)
"If we had shown greater sympathy towards Israel and had tried to help that country deal with the suicide bombers lurking in its midst, instead of offering the preachers of hate a home here, we might have put a stop to this cancer before it grew out of control".