sajoo 18 feb

1 March 2002 18 February 2002

Dear Editor,

I find it intriguing that an otherwise searching review of Norman Naimark's Fires of Hatred by Michael Innes skates so nimbly around what is arguably the most vexing empirical as well as intellectual challenge for those writing on ethnic cleansing and genocide: the Palestinian issue. Yet again, we are treated to hackneyed remarks about the Holocaust, with no reference to the fact that it led directly to the dispossession of an entire people who had nothing to do with European anti-Semitism. Innes and Naimark rightly draw attention to how ethnic cleansing can lapse into genocide. What, then, does that say about the consequences of Israel's ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from a substantial portion of their pre-1947 homeland? With continuing incursions by Israeli settlers as well as Ariel Sharon's American-backed troops into the pitiful heartland of what is left of "Palestinian territory," is there nothing that Innes or Naimark have to say about the implications? It will not, of course, do to hide behind the claim that Naimark's book is about Europe alone, for it was there that the seeds of dispossession were sown, it was European Jews who carried out the post-1947 ethnic cleansing, and it is they who continue to lead Israel in the continuation of those acts today.

Dr. Amyn B. Sajoo
Burnaby, British Columbia