A Signatory’s Letter to the JC

Dear Sir,

Can I believe my eyes? JfJfP – an anti-Israel organisation? Not in the comment section, where an opinion may legitimately be given, but right there in the news section, as if it were a fact?

Dammit, I’m a member of JfJfP. I hope nobody who knows me is going to turn around and call me anti-Israeli. It passes my understanding how anyone who cares a rap about Israel or its ever more precarious future can be anything other than anti- the present government of Israel, with failed-prime-minister Bibi at its head and that poisonous, racist crook Leiberman prominent in it – at least until he gets his collar felt. Does Leon Simons, who wrote the lead story, have the remotest knowledge of what is going on in the occupied territories – what is happening to the soul of Israel through those who govern her, run her military, and through the young men and women who carry out the occupation in their name? How does he feel when Palestinians are evicted from their homes, and on their heels as they are dragged away by our boys, in walk a bunch of settlers who claim the property is theirs? I could go on. And on.

I am for Israel, and so is JfJfP. But Israel couldn’t survive without her supporters abroad and her rulers cannot afford to ignore their opinion, even though they may pretend to. When a country is behaving badly, those who care about or belong to her cannot take refuge in ‘My country right or wrong’. They have to stand up and say, “This has to stop.” That is what the boycott is about and that is what JfJfP stand for.

Yours etc.

Lynne Reid Banks.