An Open Letter on the Murder of Palestine

Warrior of Light · January 13, 2009

from George Galloway MP

WORLDPRESSNETWORK - 7 January 2009

Dear Brother and friend AbdelBari Atwan,

Editor of Al-Quds

London

It has been said that you, Sir, are the "last Arab". We both know that is not true, there are still

others, but millions of us know why it was said of you.

You are a Knight of the Arabs that's for sure. Born in a Gazan refugee camp, you are a Prince

among men. I have known you for thirty years; back then you still had some of the dust of the

camp about you. Now you are an ever-present commentator in the media, publish the Arab

world's only independent newspaper, and are highly respected by all who know you.

Together we have fought in the land of Balfour and Sykes, of Anthony Eden and Anthony Blair,

many great political battles. Many tears and much blood has flown over those years, and

before, and its not going to stop now.

I am moved to write having seen yet another of your heart-piercing interviews on television. You

leave the interrogator speechless when you tell them that you were born there, and in the very

camp we are all watching being destroyed by fire and red-hot steel. How could you, this man of

letters, this sophisticated commentator, have come from...that?

Of course we know that it was....that...which made you, and that you will never lose your

burning sense of indignation, your cry, no, roar on behalf of those you left behind.

But it was not your voice which moved me most tonight its 5 in the morning and I am still

fitfully flicking across the channels not so much looking FOR but away refugee the unrelenting,

hypocritical, downright mendacity of most of them.

It was the voice of Amal, a young mother who appeared late last night in a package on

Al-Jazeera English, interviewed in a school in the southern Gaza Strip.

This young woman, a girl really, was with her baby one of 61 members of the same family of

refugees hiding out in this school in the hope that it would not be attacked by the Israeli

invaders. Her baby had not been changed in three days, she was feeding her the last bottle of

milk and in a dirty bottle, there was no electricity and very little running water. What there was,

was being drunk and cooked with, washed in and washed with. And the people in this school

were the lucky ones.

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