Monday, June 7, 2010

reply to paul sheehan's column June 7 SMH

Dear Editor
The columnist Paul Sheehan writing in SMH 7/6/2010 has outdone himself in the smear stakes. With not a trace of compassion for his fellow workmates at the Herald who were attacked and injured in international waters by heavily armed elements of the Israeli Armed Forces, he has launched into a bitter tirade against those in Sydney’s society who exercised their democratic right to protest against this atrocity.
When smearing the MUA for example Sheehan apparently believes along with Goebbels ‘if you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe’. The Wharfies did not stop material going to the Australian soldiers in WW11. They attempted to stop Menzies from sending iron ore to Japan before WW11 and that is how he got the name ‘pig iron bob’. They argued at the time it would come back at us as bullets, bombs and submarines and they were correct. Such truth is not repeated by the likes of Sheehan just the nonsense mentioned above which is not true.
There is a pool of journalists who subscribe to the defend Israel regardless of what it does and ignores the atrocities and other crimes it commits. It is time that people like Sheehan put pressure on Israel to lift the barbaric blockade on Gaza, a strip of land where 1.5 million people live and allow humanitarian aid in. If Governments will not do it then it is left to civil society which includes unions to speak up and to go unarmed to the borders of Gaza by sea and land and pressure for the basics of human life to be let in namely food and building material. Tragically nine people lost their lives doing just that last week and people like Paul Sheehan are deliberately trying to dishonor their sacrifice.
Yours sincerely


Denis Doherty

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