Alan Johnson,
One gets very tired of reading the expression "Jew-hatred," its use always intended to create a special category of prejudice. One level above, as it were, the now grossly over-used “anti-Semitism,” which has till now itself been treated as a unique category of prejudice, as though prejudice isn’t just prejudice.
Jimmy Carter, the most decent man to be president of the U.S. in the twentieth century, has been vilified in Israel. I saw a cartoon - just like something from the gutter literature of 1936 Germany - showing him stupidly smiling with a bunch of Palestinians (drawn to look like "dirty terrorists") and the words "Jew-hating" like the words to a song over their heads.
Simply disgusting, and something responsible Jews everywhere should speak against.
An Israeli ambassador, only a short time ago, called Carter, the only man who has made a large and genuine contribution to peace in Israel, a "bigot." This was stupid beyond words, and every clear-thinking person in the world knows it. These are fascist tactics.
Israel's treatment of the Palestinians is just plain ugly. Bush wouldn’t dare even to go see it on his trip to Israel. Every responsible witness says it is horrible and unacceptable. Bishop Tutu, again a man who speaks with real moral authority, calls it what it is, apartheid. There is no ethical or legitimate security reason for this behavior.
And there is plenty of hatred mouthed in Israel every day. Despite Israeli efforts to suppress or prevent such language being heard abroad for fear of angering supporters, prominent Israelis - including rabbis - speak of the Palestinians as roaches and vermin.
More than one conservative rabbi has said they should be exterminated, words that seem impossibly stupid from a Jewish point of view.
Only recently the Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi of Israel suggested they all be rounded up and dumped in the Negev Desert. That would be their "homeland."
Real hatred, though, is expressed through acts, not just words. Just consider Israel's ugly behavior.
A clean new government is elected by the Palestinians, representing a genuine new opportunity for peace as anyone with an unbiased brain can readily understand, and what does Israel do?
It calls them terrorists - they are not - and it illegally arrests a major part of their elected government. It threatens the elected head of government with assassination. It makes every effort to starve out 1.4 million people in Gaza. Finally it kills hundreds.
It “negotiates” with the pitiful Abbas, a man who is a complete failure in running a clean and proper government, reportedly offering him recently 65% of the West Bank, the Palestinians’ own land.
Even the Palestinians who are Israeli citizens (about 19% of the population) – descendants of those brave enough not to run from their homes under the wave of terror that marked Israel’s foundation, a terror intended to make people run, which included murder and rape and bombings by Israeli gangs – are treated with contempt.
How would you behave, Mr. Johnson, if you lived somewhere and a gang of armed settlers took over and treated you and your family like this in perpetuity?
