Alan Baker's letter needs a response ! Please write.

This article appeared in today's Toronto Star
and is biased and slanderous. It demands a
prompt reply from the member organizations
of the Palestinian National Voice.

Khaled

Also people should be speaking out!

The way of terror and the response
TheStar.com - comment -
The way of terror and the response

March 07, 2008

Alan Baker

Day after day Canadians are treated –
whether through footage on their TV screens or through
the reports from correspondents in Jerusalem, Ramallah
or Gaza – to what they are told is a "tit-for-tat" or "cycle
of violence." Canadians see the ongoing, daily spectre of
missile attacks on the Israeli towns of Sderot and
Ashkelon and suicide bombings carried out by
Hamas or other terror groups from the Gaza Strip,
and the response by Israeli forces to such terror attacks,
directed against the bombers and the terror infrastructure.
Canadians are shown people getting killed and wounded.

But there is something very wrong and misleading in
presenting this situation as a "cycle" with equal
components. The equation, so glibly presented
through the Canadian media to Canadians,
between pure, deliberate terror on the one hand,
and the attempts to prevent it on the other, is
misguided, misleading and creates in itself an
utterly false and unfair equivalence.

Hamas and the other terror organizations
functioning under its control and supervision in
the Gaza Strip are involved in directing the daily
rocket firings, which wilfully and deliberately
target Israeli homes, schools, hospitals, religious
seminaries and kindergartens for the singular
purpose of terrorizing and killing as many
Israelis as they can.

Death is their only motive. That is the way
of terror. That is what happens when they fire
40 or 50 rockets every day in the hope that all
will kill. It is deliberate and indiscriminate, and it
is directed to terrorize a civilian population. It is
not merely illegal and immoral, but it is a violation
of the most basic norms and principles of
international law. As such it is a war crime of
the first dimension, going against all accepted
norms of civilization.

Israel does not wilfully and deliberately target
civilians, schools, homes and hospitals. Israel
has no reason to harm any Palestinian wishing
to live peacefully. Israel is obliged – through a
very basic need for survival – to defend its
citizens against the very terrorists who are
actively engaged in firing the rockets and
operating the suicide bombers,
and only them.

Israel does not indiscriminately target civilian
homes, but targets those who send the suicide
bombers and equip them with their fatal
packages. Israel does not target schools,
mosques and hospitals – even when they
are perfidiously used by terrorists as a shield
for firing missiles. But tragically, because
Hamas deliberately places its operatives among
the civilian population, innocent Palestinians are
harmed in the crossfire, and Hamas uses the news
agencies and correspondents to make sure that
Canadians are treated to this very selective
point of view.

If there were no daily, deliberate rocket-fire
against Israeli towns and villages; if the industry
of importing missiles, weapons and ammunition
from Egypt were to be stopped; if the ongoing
and prevalent industry of terror-planning,
rocket-building, ammunition-manufacturing and
jihadist religious incitement and glorification
were to give way to normal industries and
economic growth; if the psyche of hatred and
terror that prevails over the Gaza Strip were to
give way to a psyche of peaceful coexistence,
culture and bonvoisinage, then Israel would have
neither justification nor need to respond to terror
and to defend its citizens.

There is no cycle of violence. But there is terror
and the response thereto. If there were no
Hamas terror, then there would be no need for
an Israeli response. If the Palestinians were to
seriously take responsibility over the territory
they control and do what any normal territorial
neighbour is expected to do – prevent the use of
its territory for terror and violence against its
neighbour – then Israel would have no cause to
defend itself.

No reasonable people can be expected to suffer
constant, daily barrages of missiles and the
deliberate murder of its civilians without the
right to defend itself. This is all the more evident
after yesterday's tragic killing in the heart of
Jerusalem.

Alan Baker is the Israeli ambassador to Canada.