Specious Reasoning

Submitted by Brad Dennis (United States), Jan 10, 2005 at 19:44

Dear Mr. Pipes,

The fact that you question the choice of semantics such as separation wall, occupied territories, settlements, and refugees leads me to question if you have actually been to the Palestinian Territories recently and as to whether you have actually witnessed what goes on over there. The so-called "security-fence," being over 20-feet high, cutting off thousands of Palestinians from their land, being littered with checkpoints around it, while not exactly like the wall in Berlin, is nevertheless a security measure that is so conveniently used as a means of oppressively monitoring, and even taking the land of, Palestinians.

The fact that Sharon himself considers Israel's heavy hand in the West Bank and Gaza strip an occupation is convincing enough for me to also consider it so. The sheer fact that 3.5 million people have hardly a place in the society, economy, and politics of Israel, if not an occupation, is on the level of a highly oppressive, self-aggrandizing, and occupatory form of governance.

...Merely because Israeli communities have been in a place for decades should not insulate them from being considered settlements. The fact that settlement expansion has gone on well into the nineties and has been the measure for taking Palestinian land for decades represents something that is close to what the French did in Algeria; namely, settle colonized land...


Sincerely,
Brad Dennis

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