Critically charged
(In response to Max Feldhake’s Oct. 14 letter to the editor.)
I am writing in response to the cynical and unjust charge of anti-Semitism slung at The State Press columnist Oday Shahin in his recent attempts to educate readers about Israel's ongoing crimes against the Palestinians.
No state is above criticism. Israel holds all the responsibilities of any other state in the international system, no more and no less. Thus, it is obscene — and a rank abuse to the history of anti-Semitism and of past Jewish suffering — to wield a blunt "anti-Semitic" weapon at anyone who seriously criticizes Israeli policies. Common knowledge informs us that it is the refuge of thugs and cowards to use sheer brute force to impose policies that are unjustifiable. So it goes also with ideological bullying and intimidation.
In these issues, crying "anti-Semitic" where there is absolutely no evidence distracts attention from what is really going on, which has nothing to do with anti-Semitism: namely, Israel's miserable and violent occupation of Palestinian lands and people.
As a Jew, though primarily as a human being, I find it doubly offensive that first Israel claims to represent me simply because I am Jewish (a claim inherently both false and racist to begin with), while at the same time the state continues to destroy the lives and lands of Palestinians and to threaten neighbors such as Lebanon with yet more death and suffering of the like that Israel has already [placed] upon the country for over 30 years.
There is nothing Jewish about a terrifying military occupation.
We mustn't forget what this is really about. One can scream about the illusory phantom of anti-Semitism all [he or she] wants, but the stubborn fact remains that Israel, with full U.S. support, carries on its sinister programs of steady "destruction of [the] whole civilization" of the Palestinian people, in the words of former U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson when describing Israel's most recent blockade of Gaza prior to the U.S.-Israeli massacres of December 2008 to January 2009.
Rather than allowing ourselves to be dumbstruck by weak, ideological bludgeons in the face of unspeakable horror, let us use the unbreakable weapons of truth and justice to help attain a just and honorable peace in Palestine and Israel.
Gabriel Matthew Schivone
Founder of Jewish Voice for Peace, Arizona Chapter
