Perth Voice Interactive

Where to begin?
As a resident near Hyde Park, where do I begin regarding the new bicycle chicanes?
Since its first development in 1897, Hyde Park has endured multiple facelifts to keep up with changing social use and conventions.
I praise the council for the 2012 lakes redevelopment, but I fail to see how these unnecessary installations add to the benefit of park users. Did someone get brushed by a cyclist once? I would have thought John Carey would be pro-cycling. I am not a cyclist but can say just having walked through them they are too close together to be used (with most simply riding around, the brown tyre treads on the lawns are proof).
More so, they substantially encroach on the vistas and overall amenity of a great example of Arcadian landscape design. William Bold would be spinning in his grave (spinning an angle grinder).
JC
Chelmsford Rd, Mt Lawley

Premature boycott
I SEE the Voice was able to assemble four of the Friends of Palestine to advertise they were going to boycott the opening of the Israeli Film Festival (Voice, August 30, 2014).
Maybe the protesters should have stayed for the film as they would have found out it was about an Arab woman and an Israeli women who shared many similarities. A bit like asking a book to be banned without even reading it.
Lezly Herbert
Pennant St, North Perth

Obliteration inaccuracy
IN your article “Palestine Friends boycott Israeli film festival” (Voice, August 30, 2014), Bob Kucera, president of Friends of Israel, says, “arts and politics shouldn’t mix”, objecting to the boycott  of the Israeli film festival.
He forgets Picasso’s famous painting Guernica, a protest of the bombing of the city of the same name during the Spanish civil war, or the Billie Holiday song “Strange Fruit” which focused attention on the lynching of Afro-Americans in the US’s southern states.
In any case, the protest was not against film-makers. It centred on the Australia-Israel Cultural Exchange, the host of the Israeli Film Festival which functions as a PR instrument promoting a white-washed view of the Israeli state and by extension the legitimisation of its colonial occupation of Palestine and its cruel treatment of its bombed out inhabitants.
It is inaccurate to say Hamas’ ”stated aim is to “obliterate Israel and kill all Jews”. What is your source for this claim? If it is the Hamas Charter think again. This is an antiquated and irrelevant document written in 1988 without consultation, consensus or correction by one person who unannounced made it public. In Article Seven there are three sentences written in an obscure and ostensibly poetic form which discuss killing Jews. It is not a categorical order “to kill all Jews”.
Conversely, Moshe Feiglin, Deputy Speaker of the Israeli Knesset and member of the ruling Likud party has recently proposed that all of Gaza be destroyed and any survivors  be put in tents until they agree to leave, a clear policy of genocide.
The Hamas Charter of 1988 is misleading and unrepresentative of current Hamas thinking as evidenced by Hamas’ acceptance of a Palestinian state limited to 1967 borders. Hamas has sent numerous signals it could begin taking measures toward co-existing with Israel, including joining the Palestinian Authority in a unity government that accepts all previous PA agreements with Israel. These are facts.
Neither is it true that “Israel launched its military offensive following a series of rocket launches from Gaza…”. Israel, pretending it was searching for three kidnapped Israeli teenagers, (while it already knew they were dead) used this as an excuse to launch a massive roundup of hundreds of so-called Hamas suspects and killed six. This broke a 19-month long ceasefire which Hamas had observed. It was then, in retaliation, that Hamas fired its rockets. This also is fact. In view of the number of inacuracies in your article, could you publish an amended version or this letter.
Vincent Sammut
Franklin St, Leederville
The Ed says: We’ve published your letter in the interests of freedom of expression. We do not accept there were inaccuracies.

Impressive length
MARGARET THOMPSON’S opening sentence of more than 80 words served at least to reflect her obvious and genuine fury (Voice Mail, August 30, 2014).
The other day I came upon a sentence that occupied a whole page, part of the preceding page and part of the following page. This is in James Joyce’s classic, Finnegans Wake, the sequel to Ulysses. Impressions of Dublin—and Perth?—by day and night. You’re in great company, Margaret.
Ron Willis
First Ave, Mt Lawley

Israel like old South Africa
I REFER to your article “Palestine friends boycott Israeli film festival” (Voice, August 30, 2014) in which Friends of Israel President Bob Kucera asserts, “Like in sport, arts and politics shouldn’t mix”.
In 1971, protests during the Australian tour of the Springboks brought worldwide attention to apartheid South Africa’s racist policies. Today a new anti-apartheid movement has emerged in response to the racist policies of the Israeli state, which in two months has bombed Gaza, killing more than 2000 mostly civilian Palestinians.
Just like racist South Africa before it, Israel has two sets of laws: one for its Jewish citizens and another for Palestinians. Palestinians living under occupation, like their black and coloured South African cousins before them, are denied freedom of movement by military check points, road blocks and curfews. They are subject to laws that define who they can marry, where they can live, where they can work and what roads they can drive on, simply because they are born Palestinian.
Palestinian homes are regularly bulldozed by Israel and Palestinian residents are denied the right to rebuild. In response, Palestinians have called for an international campaign of boycotts, divestments and sanctions (BDS) to force Israel to comply with international law by ending its occupation of the Palestinian territories and dismantling its apartheid policies.
The protest held last week outside the opening of the Israeli Film Festival was not a call to censor filmmakers and artists for the actions of their government, as asserted by Luna Palace Cinemas manager Tony Bective, but rather a call on the cinema chain not to enter into a sponsorship deal with an Israeli-government funded institution. It’s a small price to pay for justice for the Palestinians.
Nick Everett
Convenor, Friends of Palestine
WA Wilson St, Bassendean