Posted by Kevin Bates After two weeks of relentless bombing, maiming and killing by your people and the pathetic protestations by your spokespeople about Israel’s alleged victim status, I have to write to you to protest in the strongest terms. Your attacks on Lebanon are of the most barbaric ilk, masquerading as a war against terrorists. There is no doubting that the people of Hezbollah, and their Iranian and Syrian friends are barbaric themselves in the way in which they conduct their affairs. I would expect a nation that believes in God, and which professes a certain code of justice to respond with more wisdom, cleverness and compassion than you have so far shown. If you wanted to get your two or three soldiers back from these people, why would you not employ a few Mossad agents to go in and get them out? Why mutilate a whole country and use this little kidnapping as an excuse for this gross invasion? Why bomb families escaping your military wrath in their mini-van after you had instructed them to leave their village and they had obeyed your orders? Why bomb into oblivion buildings in Tyre, Beirut and other locations just in case the enemy are there? It is a stupid, clumsy, and criminal way to conduct your affairs. Why bomb the UN post in southern Lebanon where people there were genuinely working for peace, unlike your ruthless military muscle-men? Why blast the electricity supply in Gaza the other week so that the ordinary people there are deprived of electricity, water and other basic services? You are mindlessly creating more terrorists by your behaviour, and are becoming a Terrorist State yourselves. You can’t play the martyr card forever you know!! It doesn’t hold credibility any more. Since 1947 when Mehachim Begin wandered the West Bank with his gang of Irgun terrorists, you have repeatedly broken all the rules of civilized conversation and diplomacy, and have tied the US Senate up with your money so that the US is pretty-much a puppet in your hands. Always you have drawn on the incredible suffering of your people at the hands of the Nazis to justify any behaviour you chose. There have been the West Bank, Golan Heights, the 1967 War – and all of them have proved futile in increasing Israel’s security. Then there is your childish and violent wall-building program, cutting people off from their families, homes and livelihoods. Do you imagine that this will engender any kind of peace? I think not!!Q Isn’t it time you looked at some other possible approraches? I have lived on the West Bank and in Jerusalem and I have felt first-hand the paranoia of a State in fear of its life. You have many friends around the world who support your right to freedom and to exist. I am one of them and unequivocally support Israel’s right to exist. I also support the right of the Palestinian people to their own dignity and their own independence., and also the people of Lebanon. I ache for the people of Haifa as I do for the people of Beirut and Lebanon as a whole. Why can’t you see that violence only ever breeds violence? It’s a lesson the U.S. refuses to learn also. Killing people never brings peace, and even if you succeed in destroying Hezbollah, which I doubt that you can do using your present tactics, even then, peace will be an impossibility. Only love, forgiveness, real justice, and real conversation can bring peace. You can’t sing L’Chaim with a gun in your hand. I continue to pray that the destructive policies of your nation can be changed by wiser heads and more generous hearts. You have killed your one great sign of hope in Yitzhak Rabin and since then your leaders have been alternately weak or bellicose. Is there no other way? I write this not in a vindictive way, but in with an anger and a conviction that our world can no longer sustain the sorts of ideological and religious nonsense that you and your Islamic foes insist on continuing. I plead for a greater wisdom, the courage to seek peace through peaceful means and a new understanding that violence never brings real peace. In war everyone loses. Yours Sincerely., Father Kevin Bates sm
on July 27, 2006, 8:24 pm
The Honourable Naftali Tamir
Embassy of Israel
6 Turrana Street
Yarralumla, ACT 2600
July 27 2006
Dear Ambassador.,
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