The Register-Guard · Eugene, Oregon · 25 November 2012

CP-2012-004

Writer offers facts on Gaza

John C. Frandsen, Auburn

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Transcribed from the clipping

“Writer offers facts on Gaza. Regarding the spate of letters concerning the conflict between Israel and Hamas, some of the authors appear to be ignorant of certain crucial facts. Israel did not ‘give’ the Gaza Strip to the Palestinians. Israel owns only the land it occupied before the 1967 war.

Additional land that it now claims was acquired through conquest, and is properly considered occupied territory according to international law.

Further and continuous expansion of ‘settlements’ into land held by non-Israelis for many centuries is fueled by what Roger Cohen (a Zionist) has called ‘a messianic Israeli nationalism claiming all the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River.’

The people of Gaza are locked into a literal prison, from which they can leave only with Israeli approval. The goods they produce can only leave Gaza with Israeli approval, and the outside-sourced supplies of all sorts, including food, necessary for life and civilization can enter only with Israeli approval.

Hence, Israel controls its fuel supplies and systematically denies entry into Gaza of construction materials that are needed to rebuild structures destroyed in Israeli attacks, as well as those substances requisite to maintaining potable water and the sanitary and safe disposal of human and industrial waste. Yes, Hamas’ violence against Israel is reprehensible.

Yet, imagine how Alabamians would behave if 2 million of them were confined by the federal government to a 100-square-mile, barricaded-off prison strip on the west coast of Mobile Bay. As in Gaza, the coast would be blockaded and residents barred from taking boats more than 3 miles from shore.

The federal government would control access to the strip, as Israel does to Gaza, and would not negotiate with the residents on any matter. After years of living thus, might some of the prisoners justifiably protest violently?”

Context added by this archive

A letter from Auburn, Alabama, arguing by local analogy: Mobile Bay as Gaza. It runs directly under an unrelated letter about Janet Napolitano.

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