XX Xxxxxxx Rd

Hataitai

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e-mail j.monro@mac.com

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9^th January 2009

The Right Honourable John Key,

Prime Minister,

Parliament Buildings,

Wellington.

Dear Mr Key,

I write about the continuing dire situation in Gaza, and the humanitarian tragedy unfolding there, as was predictable by the entirely disproportionate, inhumane and destructive response of the Israeli Defence Force, and its controlling Israeli administration, to militant action over years from some Palestinians. It is an action doomed to failure, as all such previous actions have been. We now have the appalling tragedy of deaths at a UN run school, and the deaths of UN sponsored aid-workers.

I am particularly disappointed in the response of your government to this crisis. Your government spokesman, Foreign Minister Murray McCully, is reported as saying that New Zealand was “deeply worried by the mounting humanitarian crisis in Gaza as a result of the continuing Israeli ground offensive.” and “that attacks on United Nations facilities, including schools, in the Gaza Strip were of grave concern and underlined the need for both sides to agree to an immediate ceasefire.”

What is even more concerning is the further reported comment “We've avoided getting into a fairly pointless argument about who and what is a proportionate versus disproportionate response.”

You will know that the people of Gaza have been existing in a virtual prison for some time with the imposition of sanctions, and even before then were subject to random and demeaning restrictions on their movements for many years, fears of assassination, and rocket and missile attacks. Existence in Gaza has never been much better than miserable for nearly three generations. Over the last eight years five times as many Palestinians have died violently as compared with Israeli, and ten times as many children, over 1,000.

The situation for people in Gaza has been quite intolerable for many years, and the world’s inability to protect these people’s interests has been an inhumane abrogation of our ethical responsibility.

An article appeared in The Independent in the UK recently, written by Simon Tisdall, criticising Barack Obama for his silence on this crisis. This is what I wrote as a comment:

Simon Tisdall is right, the silence is deafening. Here are hundreds of Palestinians being butchered and normal humane conscience should demand some response. Of course no-one likes to have missiles directed at them, nor should anyone have to suffer them, but I believe the total Israeli deaths due to such is about 25, so it's the sheer disproportionality of the Israeli response again, as in Lebanon, that causes me so much grief and anger. And are the Israelis that stupid, haven't we been here before, and did it stop anything? Of course not, why should it? A proud and defiant people are being subjugated, impoverished, made sick, and killed, and they are fighting back, dirtily at times, but what other options do they have? If the positions were reversed would any Israeli capitulate to such threats or actions, of course not.

This action is not strategic in any way, it is a collective punishment on the Palestinians for being Palestinian, having aspirations for their own future including a need for redress of their rightful place in the Middle East, and electing a government that Israel doesn't like. The UK including Northern Ireland lost thousands of people during the IRA offensive on the UK, but I don't recall the UK sending bombers out to bomb the Republic of Ireland, or keeping the Republic in a murderous state of siege.

And as for stepping on President Bush's toes, that's crazy, Bush has been a lame duck president for nearly all of his last four years in office, and a dead duck and utterly irrelevant for at least the last six months. There is a gaping political vacuum in the US in any case, so how can Obama cause any problems by saying what he thinks?

The likely reason that he's not saying anything is that tragically Obama does not really represent any significant change in US policy to Israel and the Palestinians. As many who have not been caught up in hyperbole of having a black American President have queried, and feared, for the last few months - what sort of change, if any, does Obama represent?

This outstanding opportunity for Obama to establish his real credentials for change, and statesmanship, and not least some degree of humanity, have been lost. A very serious mark down for this new President, and a worrying precedent for the rest of us.

I would respectfully suggest that this last paragraph should also apply to you, Mr Key. It is my belief you have missed an outstanding opportunity to make your mark as a humane and independent statesman by stating quite forcefully that that your government considers the action of Israel intolerable, disproportionate and almost certainly illegal under many international agreements and treaties. You should have summoned the Israeli ambassador to you office to ask for an explanation, and to deliver your protest. Your meek acquiescence to the status quo is the response of a very ordinary politician, with a very ordinary imagination, as to what this degree of violence actually represents.

What has happened in the last few weeks in Gaza is appalling and inexcusable - no advantage can ever be gained by using military force to try to achieve political aims. I said exactly the same before the Iraq war, and at that time it was very disappointing that the National Party were supportive of that war. It seems the National Party have not learned much in the intervening six years. All wars are a failure, all resorts to violence are a failure, as Robert Fisk states, again and again and again, war is “the total failure of the human spirit”. It is a great pity too few people seem to take much notice and unfortunately this seems to include you.

In the last resort, it is not a matter, like Murray McCully states, of taking sides or weighing up what is proportionate or not, but of a common and basic understanding of our humanity, of our ethical response to violence and devastation, that such action is evil and destructive, that such action is itself the seed and fertile soil for further violence, and is almost always never justifiable.

We know that militarily at any rate, Israel has absolutely nothing to fear from the Palestinians. Certainly the Palestinians can cause harm, with suicide bombs and rockets. But Israel is a larger military power than the UK, with modern and sophisticated weapons, much of this paid for by their American backers, or sold by European armaments manufacturers. Israel receives billions of dollars of worth of American aid annually. At a last resort, Israel is a nuclear power, possessing perhaps up to 200 nuclear warheads. There is no way that Israel can be defeated by military means, and the Israeli appeal to “self-defence” to justify its actions is outrageous.

After a ghastly incident, with the Red Cross demanding access to part of Gaza City for four days, and eventually finding scenes of unimaginable carnage, with young children barely alive in the rubble, the Red Cross severely criticised Israel for its “unacceptable conduct”, which, it says, breaches international humanitarian law. This is a most unusual step for the Red Cross to take and reflects this organisation’s dismay with what is happening.

An article appearing in the Guardian recently contained a heartfelt article written by Prof. Avi Shlaim, Professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/07/gaza-israel-palestine). In his final paragraph he writes:

This brief review of Israel's record over the past four decades makes it difficult to resist the conclusion that it has become a rogue state with "an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders". A rogue state habitually violates international law, possesses weapons of mass destruction and practises terrorism - the use of violence against civilians for political purposes. Israel fulfils all of these three criteria; the cap fits and it must wear it. Israel's real aim is not peaceful coexistence with its Palestinian neighbours but military domination. It keeps compounding the mistakes of the past with new and more disastrous ones. Politicians, like everyone else, are of course free to repeat the lies and mistakes of the past. But it is not mandatory to do so.

I would contend that equally it is not mandatory that your government should allow the Israelis do so. Your failure to reproach Israel, to ask for accountability and to summon the Israeli Ambassador in New Zealand to lodge a protest over Israeli action is tantamount to a connivance with Israel’s murderous policies, and seriously undermines this country’s hard-earned reputation for its ethical foreign policies.

Yours faithfully,

Dr John K Monro MBChB. (Copy of this letter also sent to Hon. Murray McCully, Foreign Affairs Minister, and Mr Keith Locke, Green Party spokesman on foreign affairs. )

P.S. I am sorry that this letter has been a bit delayed in the printing. But the violence in Gaza continues. Over 1,000 Gazan people, most of them innocent bystanders, women and children, have now been killed, and numerous others dreadfully injured. What is happening is unconscionable and needs forthright condemnation. The New Zealand government continues to prevaricate, and your mute acquiescence to this state of affairs is immoral.

Tonight we hear of a Muslim owner of a Kebab shop in Invercargill refusing to serve two Israeli visitors. This is very wrong. I would like to hear your government say this is wrong . I would contend your government’s inability to voice the anxieties of so many concerned New Zealanders to the violence in Gaza, or anywhere else where it might occur, will lead to this sort of unwelcome intrusion of extreme political action on everyday life in New Zealand, as people’s understandable concerns are translated into direct action. We cannot, in our multicultural society, afford to see these sorts of divisions, which threaten the repose of our own society.

It is wrong for this restaurant owner to discriminate against others, it is wrong for anyone to assume what someone else feels about something without enquiring first, it is wrong for anyone to abuse visitors to this country who should expect only hospitality, it is wrong for immigrants to this country to bring over their prejudices with them. If these restaurant owners don’t understand this, they should return to Turkey, but I would prefer that they apologise to the two women, and offer them a free meal, a glass of wine, and some discussion about the Gaza situation. Perhaps both parties might learn from each other, rather than acting unwisely and rudely out of ignorance and malice.

What is happening in Gaza does indeed bear very directly on our life in New Zealand, and that is another good reason, apart from the overwhelming moral issue, for speaking out directly and firmly from the very beginning, it might have saved this action.

And, unless you come to understand that all violence is destructive, pointless and inimical to peaceful human relationships both internationally and nationally, we will continue to see the same sorts of problems and sorrows visit the world, and our country too.

Historian Howard Zinn wrote this in his book “The Politics of History” (1990), in a quote widely made use of in liberal writing, for good reason:

"Society has varying and conflicting interests; what is called objectivity is the disguise of one of these interests - that of neutrality. But neutrality is a fiction in an unneutral world. There are victims, there are executioners, and there are bystanders... and the 'objectivity' of the bystander calls for inaction while other heads fall."

It seems to me self-evident that the present New Zealand government is determined to continue its uncompromising stance, as a bystander. And, understand this please, as is all too evident in Gaza, being a bystander offers no comfort or protection whatsoever.

JKM