Israel and Palestine
From Rabbi Dr David J. Goldberg Sir: It really is time to take issue with Melanie Phillips and her talk of 'a terrifying firestorm of hatred' being directed at the state of Israel and Jews worldwide (The new antiSemitism'. 22 March). Her simplistic certitudes about the Middle East hardly convey the nuanced complexities of a geopolitical conflict exacerbated by religion, or help those of us who try to further understanding between Israelis and Palestinians.
The conference papers she quotes from the Vidal Sassoon Centre for the Study of Anti-Semitism might have confirmed her apocalyptic vision of 'a terrifying nexus between genocidal Arab and Islamist hatred of the Jews and deep-seated European prejudices'. Other observers at the conference, whom no doubt she will categorise as 'selfhating Jews', were disappointed by a succession of whingeing, self-justifying contributions — Professor Yehucla Bauer's apart — that reinforced the paranoid stereotype of eternal Jewish victimhood.
There are, indeed, shocking instances of anti-Jewish lies, hate and propaganda being spewed out from Arab media, textbooks and mosques. These have to be squarely addressed. But it was a recent Israeli chief-ofstaff who said that Palestinians should be bottled up like 'cockroaches', and the euphemism of 'population transfer' is being used by everwidening sectors of Israeli society to solve the Palestinian problem. Each side dehumanising the other has been the most obvious fall-out from the collapse of the Oslo peace process. By the same token, it is an easy option for sections of the European Left to excoriate powerful Israel and sentimentalise the plucky Palestinian underdog, thereby evading the issue of Holocaust responsibility. But many of us with Zionist credentials at least as valid as those of Melanie Phillips despair of the West Bank land appropriations, curfews and collective punishments carried out by successive governments, and resent the Holocaust always being brought up as a handy explanation for Israeli intransigence. Indeed, when Arid l Sharon's most vociferous apologists are right-wing and neo-con columnists (how they love their little joke about being former liberals mugged by reality!) and those frightening American Christian fundamentalists, one is tempted to say, 'With friends like these. . .
David J. Goldberg London NW5
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