Letter to the Jerusalem Report 399441

Readers weigh in on previous issues of the Report.

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
Envelope (photo credit: ING IMAGE/ASAP)
Envelope
(photo credit: ING IMAGE/ASAP)
The Israeli ghetto
The responses (March 23) to my letter (February 9), by Steve Holstein and Daniel Baum, attack me, inter alia, for trying to “protect yourself by attacking your own” and being the enemy within. These are weighty accusations and, with the addition that I do not know Jewish history and am therefore falsifying its lessons, make me out to be a thoroughly contemptible traitor.
The increasing convergence of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism is of extreme concern to anyone who believes that such an equivalence is odious and must be combated.
And I am certainly one of this number.
Particularly when the history of Zionism is examined dispassionately, it becomes clear that many injustices toward the native population of Palestine, particularly from 1948 onwards, became the bedrock of the new Israeli Jewish state. When over half a million people from 500 Palestinian villages are made refugees, one cannot expect them to simply acquiesce and welcome dispossession.
And when the remainder of Palestine is slowly settled by Jewish Israelis, then how much more acute will the sense of injustice become.
The global consensus (reflected in UN, EU and Arab League resolutions) is recognition of Israel within the Green Line borders and recognition of an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.
This consensus is a massive victory for the Jewish people particularly because the Palestinian Liberation Organization has also accepted it. But what is the Jewish response to this acceptance of Israel as a majority Jewish state? The latest Israeli election makes it very clear: repudiation of any kind of Palestinian state and intensifying racist campaigns against Arabs.
On these grounds I again repeat my charge that the “fanaticism and endorsement of illegal and immoral practices by the settler movement and the Israeli government” must be combated as a growing wave of anti-Semitism confronts Jews all over the world. This resurgence is tied to communal defense of Israel in a ‘right or wrong,’ anti-democratic, often hysterical, way that condemns all criticism of Israel as inherently anti-Semitic. The result is to drive us backwards in history at a time when all doors seem to be open to us.
Lastly, as “the proclaimed son of a Holocaust survivor,” I must protest the allegation that I have a “ghetto” mentality. The mentality of the ghetto was compromise at all costs because of a lack of political and/or military power. This forced Jews to make terrible sacrifices that did not in the end prevent murder, dispossession and psychological trauma. My concern is that Israel survive as a moral, creative and secure society, recognized (not despised) on this basis and one that enables the Jewish people to be welcomed on the basis of equal rights in open societies. The tragedy is that Israel today is becoming more and more of a ghetto and Jewish communities all over the world are increasingly following suit.
Allan Kolski Horwitz
Johannesburg
Jewish convert?
I found the “The blood libel Haggada” (April 6) article very interesting and significant. I applaud the work of the scholars in uncovering the monk who wrote this as Dominican Friar Erhard von Pappenheim.
However, did the scholars consider that Von Pappenheim might have been a Jewish convert? What makes me consider the possibility is his apparent knowledge of Hebrew and his view that the Jews, even as bad as they were, were still redeemable.
Matt Suher
Stanmore, UK
Tiger and the IAF
I suggest Shlomo Maital check the World Golf ranking. If the Israel Air Force is to be compared with Tiger Woods “On wings of carbon” (April 6), it is ranked 111 in the world, not a big endorsement.
Jakob de Jonge
Solihull, UK
Shlomo Maital responds: Reader De Jonge is absolutely right. Though both the IAF and Woods dominated their fields in the past (Tiger was world #1 for the most consecutive weeks, and greatest total number of weeks), Tiger is alas in decline, while the IAF still dominates. And when Tiger loses, it’s sad, but if the IAF loses…
Correction: The photo of an exhibit at the Bible Lands Museum, which appeared on page 41 of the May 4 issue of The Jerusalem Report, was by Reuters and not as published.
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