Dear Editor:
RE: People over politics, June 17.
Patrick Doyle says, “When one nation assails another, or their own people, it is the responsibility of all other nations to condemn these acts, and act against it, regardless of politics.” This is true, generally speaking, but applied to the Palestinian/Israel conflict, is still simplistic.
If the whole world agreed to give either the Palestinians or the Jews the best land with the best resources in the world neither side would accept. Muslims will never give up the Temple Mount because they claim Mohammad rode up to heaven from that spot and most Palestinians are Muslim. Zionist Jews want the Temple Mount because that is where the Biblical Israelite temple once stood and a significant part of Christianity wants them to rebuild it. To all of these people it really is The Holy Land. No other place will do despite Israel being a small, rocky and dry land.
Many countries really fear that if Iran were to get nuclear weapons there would be a real chance of it using these weapons against Israel, which will undoubtedly fire the same back. All the countries in the Middle East have a stake in the conflict as well as other countries using that situation to fight their own proxy wars. Does Israel have a right to exist? Do you want to fight a nuclear war over it?
Power is applied through government and so human rights are applied through government. In democracies it is through politics that governments are chosen. Human rights and politics always go hand in hand. In Canada, each political party takes a stand on various human rights abuse situations. Apparently, The Green Party of Canada is imploding over the Palestinian/Israel issue as I write this.
Canada has a short history but throughout it has stacked up a heap of human rights abuses on its various citizens and especially on the Indigenous nations who were here before the “settlers” came. Let’s yell at Mr. Chong over that, which might be more efficacious. The Middle East situation is impossible to solve, especially for Canadian politicians.
Jane Vandervliet,
Erin