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Postcard from ... Tel Aviv

It is with great sadness and dismay that I read this piece. For transparency's sake, I must state that I am a Palestinian. However, this fact neither impacted my feelings whilst reading the article nor my response to it. Laymen and religious zealots may overlook the law, but we as lawyers are obliged not to. For all of its public relations campaigns, Israel cannot wash away the fact that she is in violation of International Law (most notably the pre-emptory norms of self-determination and the acquisition of territory by force), International Humanitarian Law, the laws of war and armed conflict, not to mention is in breach of countless UN resolutions (Security Council and otherwise). Israel seeks to somehow have us overlook these realities and focus rather on the temperate climates that allow one to enjoy their skinny lattes in Tel Aviv's many cafes or the availability of certain chocolates. Heaven forbid we mention that one and a half million Palestinians are slowly being starved in Israel's embargo and complete sealing off of Gaza. Do not waste your concern on them, for Ms. Seef cannot find "salt and vinegar crisps and Cadbury’s cream eggs." Israel should not be allowed to stand with impunity above the law, most definitely not by those of us charged professionally with upholding it. Justice is the essential ingredient to any real peace. Noticeably absent from Ms. Seef's writings are the Palestinians. Not unlike Israel's premeditated and calculated ethnic cleansing of historical Palestine, as has now been so clearly embodied in the "IDF's" latest military order, Ms. Seef's depiction of Tel Aviv is completely void of anything Palestinian, or Arab for that matter. Somehow the piece states that it should be acceptable to me and everyone else that she is entitled to go there, work, enjoy the nightlife which is "unsurpassed," all while the Palestinians are being driven out from the residual slivers of their land, and barring very limited exceptions, completely denied from entry to Tel Aviv itself. If that is the case, and I as a Palestinian must (for now) settle only for a postcard from Tel Aviv...I cannot accept that this is the one I get.

14-Apr-2010

1:17 pm