I refer to the letter Hamas to blame for Israeli raids .

It must be heartening for the writer that his thoughts are echoed by none other than President George W Bush himself. Such is the insight on the affair that I am compelled to let the facts get in the way of a good ‘Israeli defence’ story.

This war did not start on the December 27, 2008. Despite the unilateral Israeli ‘disengagement’ from Gaza in September 2005, according to an Israeli Human Rights group B’Tselem ‘...Israel continued to control the air and sea space, movements between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank (also via neighbouring countries), the population registry, family unification, and the crossing of goods to and from Gaza.

‘On June 28, Israel bombed the electric-power station. Since then, residents of the Gaza Strip have relied completely on Israel for their electricity ’.

In addition to the direct killing of civilians since the disengagement – Israeli Defence Forces soldiers taking pot-shots at unarmed Gazans, children included – the population is further traumatised by sonic booms from low flying military planes so much so physicians for Human Rights Israel have petitioned against this extreme violation of human rights.

Following a free and fair election in which Hamas was elected to power, the people of Gaza were collectively punished by an Israeli siege which, in the last 18 months have starved the population of food and denied access to medical care.

The Israeli military occupation denies Palestinians the very basic of human dignity as reported by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) way back in 2007. The Israel blockade of Gaza has resulted in malnutrition amongst the 1.5 million population of the occupied land.

The Israeli army has continued to deny ICRC emergency medical teams into Gaza despite the dire humanitarian situation there.

So, for the writer to compare the Gaza-Israeli situation with the relationship between Malaysia and Thailand or Singapore is missing the point all together. Malaysia’s army is not occupying those countries.

The writer stated that Hamas has refused to sign a cease-fire agreement. This, again, is a fib as Hamas and Israel signed an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire on June 19, 2008.

Unfortunately, while the world was in euphoria after Obama’s election to the American presidency, on November 5 2008, Israel launched an incursion into Gaza killing seven Palestinians. This effectively ended the cease-fire and Hamas’ rockets flew in retaliation.

The writer also called for Hamas to ‘stop attacking Israel’. What about the Israeli stranglehold on Gaza? When the rockets stop and Gaza’s infrastructure further destroyed, not to mention the five thousand already dead (as opposed to four Israeli civilians), will Israel allow some dignity for the Palestinians?

Will Israeli talk with Hamas? Efraim Halevy, former Mossad chief certainly thinks so. After all, Hamas was elected into office by the Palestinians of Gaza.

Gaza and the West Bank are under illegal Israeli military occupation. The Palestinians are denied their basic human rights to dignified lives. History has shown time and again that occupation and oppression will be resisted.

Think of the wars of independence from colonial rule. Think of East Timor and Tibet. As Malaysians, we fought the Japanese occupation, we aimed to be free of British colonial rule however ‘benign and benevolent’ it was.

The Palestinians of Gaza do not have sophisticated weaponry to fight the Israeli military might. The Israelis do not want a viable Palestinian state and continues to trample on their dignity. Read the testimonies from Gaza via B'Tselem here

Gaza is akin to a prison camp so what choice do these Palestinians have?

The 500 or so who protested at the US embassy in Kuala Lumpur recently are joined by hundreds of thousands more in the capitals around the world, Europe included.

I humbly urged the letter writer to read beyond the up-the-minute news bulletin. All the links above are from Israeli and Western organisations websites. I have chosen them so as not be accused of being a one-sided affair to discredit anything related to the US and as stated in the above letter.