Feedback | 24 May 2003

Comment on The reek of injustice by Emma Williams (17/05/2003)

Whilst I commend Emma Williams’ for painting a graphic picture of the hardships endured by the Palestinian population, she is wrong to suggest that Israelis are deluded over this fact. Unlike that of its neighbours, Israel’s media is diverse and objective allowing a clear perspective of the conflict. I myself have watched numerous documentaries on Israeli television chronicling the suffering of the Palestinians.

Far from being deluded, Israelis view the current quagmire in terms of a trade-off, for as harsh as the reality is, the IDF’s tactics have (to a measure) succeeded in bringing the Intifada under control. Therefore whilst Israelis realise that the peace process can only gather steam once the Palestinians return to some semblance of ‘normal life’, they are naturally reluctant to compromise their own fragile security to meet this end. As much as Israel’s detractors would argue otherwise, the one and only exogenous factor that could mitigate the terms of this trade-off is the quelling of terrorism.

Ms Williams’ account would also command more credibility had she refrained from delivering virulent and unsubstantiated postulations (such as that of the IDF soldier taunting Palestinian youths before murdering them). This reflects an over-willingness to digest implausible tales, invariably gotten at second hand and with scant foundation (which has become the hall-mark of Intifada reporting). When a Palestinian child is killed amongst adults, international outrage rightly ensues. Surely a massacre of children of such barbaric proportions, in the absence of any adult deaths would have at least made the news somewhere? Forgive me if I view the veracity of this with profound scepticism. By the PA’s own statistics, deaths of Palestinian women and children have constituted 5% of the Intifada death toll. If the Israeli killing is as indiscriminate as Emma Williams suggests, surely it follows that this percentage would be somewhere closer fifty? Furthermore, as much as the death of one innocent child is one too many, it is the inevitable consequence of fighting a battle in which children are shamelessly placed in the front line.