26 December 2006

Petition-5: Israel Tourist Offices......... re: Right of Return

Presumably in an effort to attract tourists,
the Israeli Government Tourist Offices are
currently running a campaign with the slogan:

"ISRAEL - No-one belongs here more than you".

Clicking on the following URL will take you to

the official website of the Israeli Government
Tourist Office, hilariously called "Go-Israel"
(and I am sure most of us agree with the
Iranian president in wishing that it would,
and the sooner the better!!)

http://www.goisrael.com/tourism_eng

(should clicking not work,

simply copy-paste URL into your browser bar)

then click on the "Best Deals" advert,

currently on the right side of the home page, and
the headline of the new page proudly proclaims:

"ISRAEL - no one belongs here more than you."

My suggestion is as follows:
Let us all pretend to be Palestinian refugees

and their descendants, and let us all send the
following message (copy-paste) to ALL of the
email addresses listed on the website
(grouped together below for your convenience):

-------------start of comment-----------------------

"Sir / Madam,
Regarding your slogan

"ISRAEL - No one belongs here more than you",
I have the following comment:
It is with great pleasure and relief that I, who was

evicted from my ancestral homeland Palestine in
1948 along with 805,066 of my compatriots, and
my extended family, read the latest slogan of the
Israeli Government Tourist Office.
We take this to mean that we can return
immediately after receiving travel funds from

your government, and upon arriving home we
look forward to the adequate compensation to

which we are entitled under international law.
As you know, or should know, the Right of Return

is absolutely inalienable, it is an individual right
derived from the sanctity of private ownership
and a collective right derived from the principle
of self-determination, it has no statute of
limitation and cannot be extinguished by any
treaty or the establishment of a state, in our
case it has been affirmed by UN Resolution 194
and repeatedly confirmed by the international
community over 110 times in 50 years,
unparallelled in UN history.

By the way, the 800,000 who were evicted in

1948 have now grown to around 5,500,000 so
some of the Israelis imported from remote parts
of the world may have to leave, we will of course
do our best to accommodate them, that is part of
our nature, traditions and religion, however,
should there be no room for some of them,
we feel certain that they would receive a warm
welcome in America.
Your slogan is absolutely true and correct:
"ISRAEL - No-one belongs here more than you".
Yours sincerely / Wa Salaam / Shalom

the Palestinian Refugees
and their Descendants".

-------------end of comment------------------------

NOTE:
You should be able to send one group email to

all of the offices in one go, here are the current
(January 2007) email-addresses, 23 in total
(some offices have more than one email):

economy@moscow.mfa.gov.il,igtomos1@relcom.ru,igtomos2@relcom.ru,pinimil@goisrael.de,presse@goisrael.de,rafim@otisrael.com,laurentg@otisrael.com,infos@otisrael.com,director@goisrael.nl,promotion@goisrael.nl,generale@israeleturismo.it,dolores@turisrael.com,israel@turisrael.com,marketing@igto.se,info@igto.se,igto@access.ch,director@igto.co.uk,info@igto.co.uk,varditkaplan@imot.org,info@goisrael.com,daniela@imot.org,info@igto.ca,igto@israel.co.kr

I have tried to string them all together here,

separated only with commas, and it ought to
work in one copy-paste operation.

For the "Subject"-field in your email,

I suggest you use:
"Your Slogan: ISRAEL - No-one belongs here

more than you".
If you leave this field blank, or write something

totally irrelevant or insulting, your email is likely
to go straight to bulk-spam-rubbish-trash
without being read, and that would be a pity!

If you do participate I would appreciate you

telling me so, either by commenting below,
or via email on myspeak13@yahoo.com
with at least your name, city and country,
if emailing me quoting no. 5 please,
so I know which petition it was.

You agree to your details
being used on this
website for inclusion in a possible list of
petitioners.

No comments: