Adding to the growing wave of anti-Israeli hate speech?

Published: 2 September, 2010

• IN the excitement of racing off to far-off Islington to attend an event at which Israel’s misdeeds are given yet another airing, John Gulliver (August 26) appears once more to have turned into John Gullible.

He starts by calling the star of the evening Gideon Levy a “leading dissident journalist”. Dissident? In Israel, the only country in the Middle East whose citizens can, and endlessly do, openly criticise their government?

Far from being admired as a brave patriot speaking out against the authorities Levy is widely despised in Israel, on both the right and the left, for extreme anti-Zionist views.

Your stout reporter’s heart goes out to poor Levy as he suppresses the emotion he feels in speaking of Israel’s “atrocities” in Gaza.

I wonder if Levy mentioned the hail of rockets fired over the border onto the terrified residents of Sderot, long after Israel had removed every last settler from Gaza.

He probably also forgot to say that many deaths during the Cast Lead campaign were caused by Hamas deliberately neglecting to put women and children out of harm’s way, a fact that the United Nation’s Goldstone report has recorded as a war crime.

The gushing Gulliver also says “nothing less than the truth would satisfy” the oh-so courageous Levy.

Well Levy’s description of Israelis as “dehumanised” is certainly a good deal less than the truth, if not racist, as anyone who has ever set foot in Israel or spoken to an Israeli knows.

I’m not surprised someone in the audience shouted “liar”.

Levy’s supporters’ notion that Israel is uniquely  wicked and the Palestinian side entirely blameless  defies common sense and history.

It is the Palestinian leadership that has refused to recognise Israel and turned down every offer of peace since 1948, and it is still making impossible demands, including a right of return accorded to no other refugee group in the world (unlike the Palestinians, they are normally absorbed into their host countries).

NICOLE SEGRE
NW5