Madam, - It is surely extraordinary that while most of the world regards Israel's continued aggression against the Palestinian people as illegal and outrageous, very little has been done to stop it.
Over the years, the Israeli government has violated well-established precepts of international law and ignored numerous United Nations resolutions concerning its occupation of Palestinian lands and its repeated acts of military aggression. The small town of Bethlehem is completely encircled by the so-called security barrier which effectively prevents the mobility of Palestinians into and out of the town.
This is particularly disastrous for the normal operations of Bethlehem University, whose students and staff live across the entire territory of the West Bank. Now, with this absurd eight-metre-high wall, with the many Israeli checkpoints they must pass through, and their restriction to dirt tracks rather than the main roads, they have an impossible task in trying to attend their university. Is there no one in the greater political world who can say "Stop" to the Israeli government? The answer to this question must lie principally with the US government.
Though only some 2 to 3 per cent of the US population, the power of the Jewish lobby is awesome in American society. The Jewish writers Lipset and Raab noted in their 1995 book Jews and the New American Scenethat "Jews make up 50 per cent of the top 200 intellectuals, 20 per cent of professors in the leading universities, 40 per cent of partners in the leading law firms in New York and Washington". Bishop Desmond Tutu, who was awarded the 1984 Nobel Peace prize, said recently: "The Israeli government is placed on a pedestal in the United States and to criticise it is to be dubbed anti-Semitic. People in this country are scared to say that wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful, very powerful". The former UN secretary general Kofi Annan commented: "The whole world is demanding that the Israeli government withdraw [from the occupied Palestinian territories]. . .I don't think that the whole world can be wrong."
No one denies the immense power of the Jewish lobby in the US. It is a simple fact, and it is most evident in the Washington political arena. The Jerusalem Postnotes that the Jews are the major source of funds for the Democratic candidates, and they contributed some 50 per cent of the funds for President Clinton's 1996 re-election campaign.
It is therefore hardly surprising, though profoundly tragic, that none of the current candidates in both main parties is taking a critical stance on Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people.
- Yours, etc,
JOHN KELLY, Mount Eden Road, Donnybrook, Dublin 4.