An Inapt, and Dangerous, Analogy
Letty Cottin Pogrebin is entitled to her criticism of Israel and her horror at the conditions in Hebron (“The ‘A-Word’ in Hebron,” April 1).
She is not entitled, however, to historically inaccurate analogies that severely damage the reputation of the state both of us love. Apartheid was a legal form of racial segregation enacted by the South African legislature in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The antecedent of apartheid was the colonization of southern Africa by whites.
The antecedents of Israel’s stance toward the West Bank are far different: Israel took control of the West Bank in the aftermath of a defensive war that stemmed from Israel’s neighbors’ threats against its very existence. Unlike South African blacks’ relationship to the apartheid regime, the Palestinians have a relatively easy way to resolve their differences with Israel: Accept Israel’s longstanding invitation to negotiate a peace agreement.
This is more than semantics. The apartheid canard is part of the larger effort to delegitimize Israel by essentially making Israel a pariah state. When Jews such as Naomi Klein and now Pogrebin jump on the bandwagon, anti-Semites around the world cheer.
RABBI JOSHUA M. AARONSON
Park City, Utah
Thank you, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, for shining some light into the benighted enclave of fanaticism and chauvinism that is the Jewish settlement in Hebron.
I would encourage many more Israelis and American visitors to go to Hebron and see for themselves the swaggering contempt and the humiliation heaped by the settlers upon innocent Palestinians who are seeking simply to live their lives unmolested in their own homes. I believe most would be equally revolted and ashamed and would hopefully demand that this unconscionable behavior be reined in.
GIL KULICK
New York, N.Y.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
