My letter to the Canadian Prime Minister, following his "pro-Israel" comments

Dear Ms. Godfrey-Goldstein:

On behalf of the Prime Minister, I would like to acknowledge receipt of your e-mail regarding the situation in the Middle East.

Please be assured that your comments have been carefully reviewed.

Thank you for writing to the Prime Minister.

L.A. Lavell
Executive Correspondence Officer
for the Prime Minister's Office

From : Angela Godfrey-Goldstein
Received : 19 Oct 2006 05:21:46 PM >>>

Sir, my country, Israel, is descending ever more deeply into a deeply disturbing state of apartheid, and consistently refusing to negotiate with Palestinian partners and Lebanese and Syrian neighbours who want peace. It is simply not true to say there are no partners for peace among our neighbours; those of us working for peace meet those willing Palestinian partners - almost the entire population - on a daily basis. And we read of Syrian overtures that are rejected, just as the Saudi Initiative offering full peace and regional integration was ignored. Whilst our Lebanese neighbours have been completedly and deliberately alienated and radicalized. Nor is framing this conflict as a War on Terror an accurate translation: the Israeli Occupation is the corrupting influence which causes resistance and aggression - legitimate resistance to occupation under international law.

Israel's ever expanding settlement enterprise (almost half a million settlers now live on occupied Palestinian land) means that the chances for a negotiated settlement are disappearing. Food aid is no solution.

Will you come to the funeral party, or dance at the Wake? And then ask whether when there was time, we all did enough to guarantee real peace and a viable Palestinian state? Because that funeral party will also celebrate the demise of Israel. Those of us living here already mourn for a country that has lost its morality, its liberalism and its caring nature. Fascism, as personified in ascendant politicians such as Lieberman and others, is a natural outcome to years of committed militarism and racism and rejectionism.

A sustainable Israel is simply not feasible if the current Israeli policies do not change drastically. Only a negotiated settlement with the Palestinians (and not a win-lose solution) will bring a future for all of us. Please help us to get our government to that negotiation table.

The deprivation and de-development being deliberately caused to the Palestinians is a crime. It has been policy for the past 40 years of Occupation, especially since the beginning of the Oslo 'peace' process, when settlements doubled as did the number of settlers, especially in strategic settlement blocs. That policy (Sharon's hideous legacy) shows what the real agenda always was - for example, to take all the water, to prevent the Palestinians from having Jerusalem as a shared capital, and even indeed from ever having a viable state.

My country, Israel, badly needs saving from itself. It cannot have escaped your notice that since its recent failed enterprise in Lebanon (in which war crimes were committed, not least by the disproportionate nature of the Israeli blitzkrieg on the Beirut power station and other major infrastructure before the Hizbullah rocket attacks started), Israel has not moved towards negotiations.

Those of us who work for peace hope you will reconsider your statements, and start getting the parties to the table. Israeli resistance to negotiation
is the major issue here. And the settlement blocs. Please watch THE IRON
WALL on google video to see what it is really all about.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4866316426876380615

Sincerely,
Angela Godfrey-Goldstein, Jerusalem

'The people of the world do not need to choose between a Malevolent Mickey Mouse and the Mad Mullahs'
Arundhati Roy in The Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire

Watch THE IRON WALL on google video at:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4866316426876380615