Palestine resists occupiers

Both Sydney Kaye (Boycott, divestment, sanctions fast will do nothing, May 16) and Don Krausz (Hunger strikers are killers, May 18) show a callous lack of appreciation for the national aspirations of the Palestinian people. Kaye urges Palestinians to “enter into good-faith discussions”. How can Palestinians reciprocate when the Zionist good faith that they have experienced over decades has come in the form of dispossession, the destruction of hundreds of their villages, expulsion, death, house demolitions, theft of aquifers, uprooting of thousands of trees, illegal settlements, daily humiliations at check-points and so on?

Krausz claims the prisoners who have undertaken the fast were indoctrinated. Sadly, Krausz fails to understand why the dispossessed resist their colonisers. Had Zionists themselves not used indoctrination since the latter years of the 19th century, Palestinians (Muslim, Christian and Druze) would have had no reason to counter the enduring colonisation of Palestine.

He implies that a 3,300-year presence in Palestine entitles Jews to appropriate what belongs to others. By the same logic, people outside Africa (including Zionists) can have a claim to Africa because humans have had a presence on this continent for 200,000 years.

History will judge the Zionist colonisation of Palestine as one of the worst in terms of the suffering it has inflicted and continues to inflict on the hapless Palestinians — whether in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank or in refugee camps.

Gunvant Govindjee

Via e-mail