Honestly anti-war
ALLAN WOLMAN (“Tribunal poser”, May 20) rants that the Russell tribunal on Palestine (RToP) did not permit him to disrupt proceedings when the tribunal met in the District Six Museum in November 2011.
The Israeli government was invited to participate, but chose not to do so. We brought almost 30 witnesses to Cape Town to testify, predominantly Israeli and Palestinian, and they were crossexamined by the jurists.
The Zionist lobby demonstrated outside the building in idiotic kangaroo suits and crashed the RToP website, thereby confirming their male fides. The website was up-and-running again within 48 hours, and the tribunal’s report on the Cape Town session confirmed that Israeli government behaviour towards Palestinians meets the legal criteria of apartheid in terms of international law as a crime against humanity.
The Palestinian member of the Knesset, Haneen Zoabi, who testified was also immediately threatened with expulsion from the Knesset, thereby confirming that Israel is a gangster state that masquerades as a democracy.
Subsequent sessions of the RToP in New York (October 2012) and Brussels (September 2014) considered the complicity of the US and UN in not holding Israel accountable to international law, and the war crimes committed in Gaza during July/August 2014. Your readers are invited to study the RToP reports on the russelltribunalonpalestine website.
The Russell tribunals were established during the 1960s by the late Bertrand Russell and first considered US war crimes in Vietnam. The Americans at the time were apoplectic, but now almost universally agree that the war in Vietnam was inexcusable and that the most barbaric atrocities were committed.
The RToP was established at the initiative of a survivor of Nazi concentration camps, the late Stéphane Hessel, who, given the Holocaust history, was appalled that any Jews could commit Israeli war crimes in Gaza during 2008/2009. Regrettably, the Israeli army – as the RToP report on the 2014 Gaza war crimes and the Breaking the Silence report by Israeli soldiers both confirm – is a menace to the world and a threat to international peace and security.
Given the recent spate of letters smearing me as anti-Semitic, my response is that I am not anti-Semitic, but I am unashamedly anti-war, whether perpetrated by Muslims, Jews or Christians. And sadly, the Christians have by far the worst history!