Aug 30, 2010

An Open Letter to All Who Support Shalit’s Family - #BDS

If the price for the release of one thousand Palestinian political prisoners is an Israeli soldier who was part of the criminal siege of Gaza, then so be it.
You understand that the Israeli government is responsible for the fact that Shalit is still a prisoner because Netanyahu’s government refuses to release the Palestinian prisoners that Hamas demands. You are willing to exchange Shalit because in your eyes the life of one Israeli is more valuable than the lives of one thousand Palestinians. As long as you hold to this racist outlook, you remain prisoners of the Israeli state. All 11,000 political Palestinian prisoners should be released, because they belong to a nation struggling against the oppression that you are part of.
What you do not understand is that the Israeli state is responsible for the criminal siege of Gaza, where 1.5 million people are living in a huge open-air prison, most of them refugees expelled by the Israeli state in 1947-8 and their descendants. You have not demanded an end to the siege, or the return of the Palestinian refugees, or the release of all Palestinian political prisoners – because you still believe that the enemy is the Palestinian nation and in particular those who have dared to struggle against their oppression.
You believe that the Hagana, Etzel and Palmach, organizations which used terror against the Palestinians, were freedom fighters, but that the Palestinians who are struggling for their freedom are terrorists.
You do not understand that it is not the Palestinian people who are your enemy but the racist imperialist state, Israel. A state that is not only oppressing the Palestinians but is a death trap for you as long as you support and identify yourselves with this state.

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