Re: Louis Gitlin’s letter (Dec. 20)

Posted

Mr. Gitlin’s letter denigrated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s absence from Nelson Mandela’s funeral. (Yuli Edelstein, speaker of the Knesset represented Israel.) Gitlin further rebuked Bibi for “driving a wedge between world opinion and Israel” and condemned “building in the occupied territories.” While Mandela welcomed South Africa’s Jewish community’s support in courageous efforts to abolish South Africa’s apartheid regime, Mandela’s halo is tarnished with memories of his biased rhetoric, which blindly supported Palestinian terrorism against Israel and turned truth upside down and stood it on its head. 

For more than two millennia, Gitlin’s “world opinion” reflects historic, knee-jerk racist global anti-Semitism. Long before the word “settlements” was on their lips, pogroms, genocides and holocausts were committed against the Jews by “world opinion.” World Jewry, and now Israel, has always been the world’s favorite scapegoats and whipping boys. If there were no Jews, the racist, anti-Semitic insane world would “manufacture” Jews in order to play their barbaric blame game.

If Arabs live as full citizens in Haifa, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, then Jews have an historic, legal, moral and biblical right to dwell in Judea and Samaria, living side-by-side in peace. Our hearts, souls and support go out to Bibi who exemplifies Israel’s highest humane ideals and intrepid courage in the face of deaf, dumb, blind anti-Semitic “world opinion.” There will be no two-state solution, until Hamas/Hisbollah charters/Palestinian Authority renounce terrorism, recognize Israel’s right to exist, defensible borders, and cease teaching three-year old bullet-belted kids hateful propaganda.

Anne Schwartz
Providence