04/07/2002 00:00
TW
0

Dear Sir,
In your viewpoint of June 27th, titled “The let down over Gib,” you dismissed the idea of the intentional invasion of a Spanish beach by the British Royal Marines with a far fetched example of D-Day, when the beaches were far away and no GPS systems available, disregarding the opinion of today's military experts. The Spanish as a whole think it is high time the British government stops wronging Spain with the tenancy of a colony on its soil, after all both countries are allies. The British military, part of the political establishment, is of course reluctant to return Gib. because it is a base with all the devices to monitor or spy on the European net of communications. What about the inhabitants of Gib? I understand their opposition to being integrated in Spain when you consider that nearly half of Spaniards think of their state, not as a “motherland,” but as a “sinister stepmother.” But the true issue for the Gibraltarians is their parasitical (money-laundering, contraband, no taxation etc.) way of life coming to an end with Spanish sovereignty. The juridical status of Gibraltar given in the Utrecht Treaty is very clear and can not be altered unilaterally and states “such as property is ceded with territorial jurisdiction and without open communication on land with the neighbour country.” Yours sincerely.

Ramon Pujol, Palma.

The British and Israel
Dear Sir,
With reference to your letters from Mr. Richard Parker dated 28.0.2002.
Regretfully I am not as well versed as Mr Parker in obtaining information that could well be termed as prejudicial but feel that by his writings he could qualify for Oswald Mosley's blackshirts. When he writes that Israel receives a subsidy of three billion dollars given by the government of the Ball Park attendant (Mr Bush) he omits mentioning that the state of Palestine also receives enormous subsidies from Saddam Hussein and also its other oil-rich neighbours...neighbours which have never helped Palestine in its struggle...sure the money was there but not the man power..., why was that, there is another point that Mr Parker has not mentioned. What happens to the vast subsidies. The Israeli subsidy used by this supposed corrupt state is used primarily to create a state with all of the amenities of modern day living, but look across the border and all you see are run down areas, the base of today's struggle where jealousy rears its hungry head, strangely enough there are 20'000 Arabs working in Israel. The question of weapons of mass destruction, Mr Parker has obviously forgotten to mention Saddam Hussein. You are quite right Mr Parker, Israel has been invaded by its neighbours and it became necessary to occupy the invader's land in order to safeguard the borders of Israel. The point that Israel has been the only country in the world that has been invaded and in turn has occupied all of these countries for short periods as a means of safeguarding the borders of Israel. But you talk very disparingly of this attitude, yet if one goes back beyond the stipulated 50 years and think of how we obtained the British Empire and how we are sill paying for it.

You also talk of religious discrimination in Israel where half the world has its share of religious scandals both politically and sexually. I am not inferring that the state of Israel is perfect, but this is a new country surrounded by millions of hostile Arabs and yet it is still managing to maintain a good standard of living. If you cast your mind back to the last war, Israel was the only country in the Middle East that was pro-British and for its thanks Britain abstained from voting for a homeland for Israel. You condemn Mr Sharon for the deaths of many Arabs, yet would you also condemn the power that be who authorised the 1'000 plane raid on Dresden, a raid that had many hundreds of thousands of casualties for, like the state of Israel, England was at war. You criticise every aspect of the state of Israel so much that your letter reads like a Nazi dictated piece of rubbish. Yours sincerely.

Wallace Gordon, Palmanova