By Lasse Wilhelmson
Published in Flamman July 2006
During his visit to the White House, Israel’s prime minister, Olmert, repeated his claim that ‘the Hamas government must recognise Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state and disarm the terrorist groups’. Now the so-called international community is attempting to force the Palestinians to comply by starving them to death.
Why should the Hamas government recognise the Jewish state whose very existence rests on the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the refusal to allow them the right to return as laid down by the UN?
Why should the Palestinians be deprived of the firearms they use to defend the remaining 10 per cent of their country? While Israel’s modern army, complete with nuclear weapons, has stolen almost all of Palestine?
Why should the Palestinians, victims of serious and recurring crimes, be boycotted and not Israel, the perpetrator?
Defending a country against occupation is guaranteed in human-rights legislation. Wars of aggression, occupation and ethnic cleansing are in conflict with the legislation. The Jewish state of Israel lacks legitimacy. Its ‘right to exist’ cannot be recognised by any country because it has no constitution and no defined borders. But these are the demands now being made by Israel of the Hamas government, which is merely the elected representative of the occupied Palestinians living in the remaining reservations. All the demands being made of Hamas should rightly be made of Israel. The hypocrisy of the so-called international community regarding this conflict is as expanding and unrestrained as Israel.
It is perhaps in the interests of Israel and the US to wipe Palestine off the map. But why must the EU and Sweden be parties to it?
Sweden’s minister for foreign affairs, Jan Eliasson, said in a radio interview on May 5th, among other things, that ‘Hamas must recognise Israel’, despite the fact that there is no support for this in human-rights legislation.
What would he say if Sweden was occupied?
Lasse Wilhelmson 