The Distant Ocean

Dark anniversary

Forty years ago, Israel launched a war against its neighbors, seizing the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights.  Forty years later, Israel has yet to abide by  UN resolutions and relinquish the land that it gained by force.  And just yesterday:

Israeli tanks and troops pushed deep into the southern Gaza Strip on Monday in the first such ground operation into the area in months.

This war is commonly known as the Six-Day War, but it would more accurately be called the Fourteen thousand six hundred and ten and still counting-Day War.  We can only hope that that joke won't still apply in 2047...but I certainly wouldn't bet on it.

As I've said before, this war will finally end when Israel decides that it wants peace more than it wants Palestinian land.  The question is just how much of a price we'll all pay before that happens.

Some head still left; continue bashing against wall

I occasionally write to people in the media in an attempt to get them to cover news that's being ignored (or to thank them for having done it already on their own...though sadly, I don't get much chance to do that).  My batting average is .000 so far, but I keep doing it anyway, not so much out of any expectation that it will make a difference as a belief that it's important to keep trying.  If nothing else, I want them to know that there's an audience for the kind of information that's systematically underreported or unreported in the U.S. media.

Below is the latest example--a letter I wrote to Andrew S. Ross, the Executive Foreign and National Editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, prompted by a posting of his about the 1967 war.  You will of course be the first (well, okay, the second) to know if anything positive comes of it.

__________________________________

Andrew,

Last week there was important news about Theodor Meron, who in 1967 was the legal adviser to the Israeli Foreign Ministry.  At that time he wrote a legal opinion (classified "top secret" and "extremely urgent") stating that it would be illegal under international law for Israel to build settlements in the Occupied Territories.  Meron, who has since become an internationally-respected jurist, has reiterated that conclusion now:

    http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2584164.ece

40 years later, we can see the results of Israel having ignored Meron's legal opinion (and more importantly, international law).  I can't think of a single piece of information that's more critical to understanding the situation in the Occupied Territories.  Yet to my dismay, not a single major U.S. media outlet has picked up this story.

I would be extremely pleased to see my hometown paper be the first to report on this, and I'd urge you to follow up on it.  You'd be doing your readers a great service.

Thanks.
__________________________________

UPDATE: Andrew Ross's response, in full, was:

Odd headline, however ('Secret memo shows Israel knew Six Day War was illegal').

If you havent already, by all means enter your note in the Comments section of the blog post on the Six-Day War.

Regards

I wrote back to say that while I will post it as a comment on the SFGate blog (or try to, since their registration firewall has made it impossible so far), I think this should be a major story on page 1 of the print edition--not just the 15th comment on an online blog posting.  I'd like to believe that he meant "please post this on the blog, and in the meantime a crack team of Chronicle staffers will spring into action to put together a comprehensive account of Meron's statements," but somehow I suspect that might be ever so slightly off the mark.