As the Palestinian ambassador to South Africa, I would also like to share my views with your readers after reading Ilan Baruch’s article .
As the Israeli ambassador to South Africa, one expects Baruch to be objective in his approach regarding the political rights of the Palestinian people. But he reflects Zionist, racist views that tend to blame the victim.
For example, he not only manipulates the historical facts, but insists on blaming the Arab countries for Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and the Palestinian holy city of Jerusalem. This approach, in my view, is inconsistent with logic, international law and legitimacy.
I am not surprised that Baruch failed to mention the numerous United Nations resolutions regarding the rights of the Palestinian people.
In his comment, he interestingly regards the 1948 war by the terrorist Zionist armed militias against the indigenous Palestinian civilians as a “war of independence”, ignoring the massacre of thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians.
In these ways, Baruch fails to refute Ronnie Kasrils’s arguments [“Myths of Zionism”, January 27]. There is no acknowledgment by Baruch that the Holocaust caused my people to lose their land.
My parents were forced to leave their homes and land in 1948; many of my relatives were murdered by the very people who suffered under the Nazis — mine is a common story, yet it is one that is not reflected in Baruch’s article.
Baruch writes that he invited individual ministers from the Palestinian authority to his home, but this is hardly a sign of coexistence.
Yes, we are interested in a political settlement based on the right to self-determination and the establishment of an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital. Any negotiations ignoring this basic demand will not succeed.
Ali Halimeh is the Palestinian ambassador to South Africa