"Of course Israel has a right to exist. Israel does exist. It is the one existence that none of us can deny. It exists in our everyday lives. It exists in every consciousness of our being. It exists in the maiming of our children, the dispossession of our old peoples, the brutalisation of our young. It exists in the decanting of the Palestinian population from Palestine through justifiable homicide, through judicious and judicial imprisonment, through political exile - as once the Caribbean was 'decanted' of the Arawaks, the Americas of the Indians and Australia of its Aboriginal population. Israel exists.
"Israel exists, above all, in the collective unconsciousness of the oppressed and the exploited as once that consciousness existed in them. Israel exists, above all, as an object lesson to us that we do not ourselves become oppressors in the name of our oppression.
"Of course Israel has a right to exist. That is not a problem for us, for black and Third World people. We do not deny Israel's right to exist. What we do deny is Israel's denial of the Palestinian's right to exist - in Palestine." (Ambalavaner Sivanandan, 1991)
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