Salient. Official Newspaper of Victoria University of Wellington Students Association. Vol 40 No. 23. September 12 1977
And again on the Middle-East
And again on the Middle-East
Dear Salient,
It would be interesting to confirm that the interpretation you give to the Middle-East policy adopted at August Council was shared by the NZUSA National Executive. I mean that an important question is not resolved by the loosely-worded motion passed at Massey last month because it does not say whether a Palestine State should be created on the whole of the Israel/West Bank/Gaza area or only on part of it, or even somewhere else! If the interpretation in "Salient" is followed, then possibly NZUSA will vote to keep the Israeli students out of any international organisations (like the Asian Students Association) and allow the General Union of Palestine Students to represent 100,000 tertiary students in Israel. I hope Lisa Sacksen will clarify this point.
You know, but carefully omitted to explain, that only three campuses support the NZUSA policy to replace (according to your interpretation Israel with a Palestine State. Only Waikato, Massey and Victoria voted in favour; Auckland, Canterbury, Lincoln and Otago abstained because they had no mandate to support their motion. Students at these campuses either believe that the issue is irrelevant to them or that Israel's independence and self-determination should be preserved, or they are still undecided on the question. Anti-Zionist lobbies are at work in most of these campuses; despite them, most students do not support the dismantling of Israel (the President of Massey University Students Association openly expressed his contempt for the motion to me, even though Massey voted for the motion!)
I don't think that Victoria students are much different from other in this respect, as, past meetings of SRC would indicate! Perhaps next year the delegates to NZUSA Councils will decide to represent their students' support for Israel, instead of merely abstaining. I am optimistic that this will happen.
A whole host of corrections should be made to many recent Salient reports. I have space only for one or two from the various articles.
For a start, the topic of the debate at Arts Festival was not "that NZ should recognise the Palestine Liberation Organisation". This topic is not possible for the Ambassador who cannot publicly campaign against or for a specific policy over the head of his host government. The topic was "that NZ should support the PLO" which allows various gradations of support to be discussed; I thought both speakers spoke capably on this topic from their different view points. Though mis-reported by the "Evening Post", the "recognition" motion was never advertised as being the motion under debate.
The Evening Post did at least report fairly carefully the Ambassador's precise definitions in describing the PLO as a fascist organisation. There was no attempt by him to use emotive descriptions without explaining why such terms could be applied, contrary to your report!
His description of Jordan as a "Palestine Arab State" is Justified by the PLO themselves, who say their goal after the conquest of Israel is the removal of the Jordanian Government and the "unification" of Palestine from the former "Zionist entity" and "Has hemite monarchy". Palestinians are now an integral part of Jordan—in the army, in government, in a society with the same values, language, religion and nationality. Are they asking (and can they ask?) that the Jewish character of much of Israel today should be destroyed to make it suitable as homeland for Palestinian Arabs? In any case, though 500,000 Palestinians left Israel in 1948, a similar number of Jews came to Israel from Arab States which expelled them after Israel's War of Independence. Where is the sense and Justice in trying to unscramble the population and nations this created?
David Merritt's article in "Salient" No 22 says the Arab armies went into Palestine to protect the Arabs"; he knows they went in to prevent a partition and to destroy Israel before it started, if possible.
No wonder David pays such attention to the deaths of Deir Yassin. He has no other incident to offer as "proof" of a Jewish plan to terrorise the Arab population into leaving. There was no terrorist plan of this kind; but no-one can doubt the nature of the unrelenting terrorist campaign against ordinary civilians in Israel and around the world. David admits that the King David Hotel, attacked by Irgun, was a military headquarters; today the Palestinian terroritst define any Israeli citizen of any age, as a military target.
Why should Israel act as if peace had come until peaceful co-existence between Jew and Arab in the Middle East is guaranteed by all concerned? Dave Merritt further staess that the UN Security Council of 22 November 1967, called on Israel to withdraw from Sinai, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. He knows this is only part of the truth—Salient readers should discover for themselves what the resolution really said.
Saying that the "Zionists" claim Palestine "for historical reasons based on their biblical traditions" is also only a part of the truth. I, and the Ambassador in his article, have given more important reasons why the Israelis believe they have a right to self-determination in Palestine. This self-determination is the basic aim of Zionism and for this reason almost 100% of Israelis are Zionists. It would be more honest for Dave Merritt and your editorial comment, to refer to the "Israeli people" instead of the "Zionist movement" claims, aims etc., just as the claims of the Palestine Liberation Organisation dignified by the title of "Palestinian peoples" claims.
But this would be only a small step on your behalf toward an objective view of the situation.
Yours sincerely,
P.J. Saxby.