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Very different chronicle
• PHOTOGRAPHER David Rubinger is very left-wing, according to the article under the pen of Ruth Gorb, (Photo-chronicler of Israel February 14) a review of Rubinger’s recently published book of photographs of 60 years of the state of Israel.
But what of the Palestinian perspective? A casual reader of the article may be led to believe that the state of Israel was founded on land that was either uninhabited or inhabited by people eager to be expropriated by Jewish settlers.
Your article does not mention that the Haganah, the “unofficial Israeli army” in which Rubinger fought, is accused of various acts of brutality against Palestinians.
The foundation of the state of Israel in 1947 is what Palestinians call Nakba (the catastrophe), a milestone in a process that has led to the progressive weeding-out of the native population from the land in which it used to live, and the consequent creation of an enormous population of refugees.
Ruth Gorb’s article shamefully celebrates the Israeli side of the story without a passing mention for the other side. Palestinians have been denied a voice in the west, including the “left-wing” west, for too long.
Let’s not forget that the British “old” Labour Party was supporting the Zionist project well into the 1970s, in the illusion that kibbutzim were a socialist paradise.
In reality the kibbutzim were racialised institutions, often set up on stolen agricultural land, however communal their internal organisation may have been. Old Labour has its own skeletons in its cupboards. Can we expect a bit more balance in future?
LUCA SALICE
Mansfield Road, NW3
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