Know the facts before visiting the Holy Land

SOME prominent Irish tour operators have recommenced promoting tours to the Holy Land.

However, these operators should consider that there are an increasing number of historical sites under dispute, and under false and illegitimate claims by Israel.

Such visits carry the risk of creating historical distortions in the minds of visitors.

Further, in keeping with Israeli patterns of tourism, visitors are unlikely to have the opportunity to meet and encounter Palestinians, and understand their legitimate claims to a just share in the travel and tourism sector in the Holy Land.

The Irish tour operators are giving Israel an important vote of confidence by promoting Israeli tourism and generally improving Israelis image around the world.

It should be known that Israeli tourism has been an instrument of propaganda against the Palestinians, presenting them in a very unfavourable and untruthful light, as a dangerous and violent people, void of history and culture. Encouraging tourists to Israel becomes an endorsement of Israeli racist propaganda assisting Israel in keeping the tourism industry of Palestine invisible to visitors from around the world.

While there are more than 6,000 Israeli tour guides, there are only 300 Palestinian tour guides with a mere 42 Palestinian guides who are permitted to work beyond the West Bank in Israel.

The vast majority of Palestinian professionals in the tourism industry have been denied entry to Jerusalem since 1993.

The Israeli military, the I.D.F., will not let them past the checkpoints to reach Jerusalem. This is the same IDF that carried out the mass murder of some 1,500 defenceless citizens of Gaza, 640 of which were children, and continues to lay siege to that open air prison, carrying out daily aerial attacks and other acts of wanton destruction which confines these unfortunate Palestinians to a stone age existence.

These facts should be in the public domain and particularly in the knowledge of potential visitors to the Holy Land.

Daniel Teegan

Union Hall

Cork