Don't be just another rag

Letters

Editor: I very much enjoyed reading and applaud your article ("Voices of our community," Bulletin cover, July 5) in respect of journalistic integrity, although I have to admit that I am extremely disheartened that you had to write it in the first place. Unfortunately, there is a tendency among some people in minority communities, and particularly those who consider themselves to be under siege, to be extremely intolerant of opinions that don't coincide with what is assumed to be a generally accepted and "safe" position on controversial topics.

Personally, I believe that Svend Robinson is a self-promoting politician whose views merely articulate the prevailing left-wing pathos with respect to Palestinian victimhood – a topic to which the left has devoted an entire industry. I believe that Robinson's simplistic, reductive and tendentious ideas about the Middle East conflict are regrettably all too common and, more disturbingly, I believe that some of the vitriolic rhetoric on the left, from which Robinson is certainly not immune in some of his pronouncements, veers, however unwittingly, dangerously towards anti-Semitism. Nevertheless, it would be much more constructive to engage Robinson in debate than to censor him, and it would be imprudent to assume that his opinions don't matter, or that he doesn't have some legitimate points to make.

I think that your editorial very eloquently and forcefully made the case as to why it's so important to hear opinions and points of view that challenge our assumptions and make us think and react, irrespective of how uncomfortable they make us. I would expect a community Jewish newspaper to present a wide range of opinions from all sectors in the community (and from outside as well) that deal with topics of great concern and interest to us all. Unfortunately, there will be some who think that a publication like yours must only be a forum for publishing comfortably conformist opinions and ideas, generating good public relations and reporting on a few well-placed social events. I, for one, contend that we have enough of those rags around. Please don't ever submit to intimidation and attempts at censorship in your publication.

Keep up the good work.

Frederick Fajardo
Vancouver

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