Don't publish Felton

Letters

Editor: I was mystified to see a letter published in the Bulletin (March 14) from Greg Felton, a well-known anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish writer, whose main claim to fame was when he was banned from writing about Israel for the Vancouver Courier because of his extremist anti-Jewish views.

Among other things, Felton is a proponent of the Khazar hypothesis (long disproven), by which Ashkenazi Jews are not Semites at all, but rather descendents of the Khazars, a Turkic/Tatar/Mongol people who lived in southern Russia at the turn of the first millennium. Never mind that Ashkenazi Jews didn't speak a variant of Turkish but rather German-based Yiddish, Felton no doubt prefers this thesis because it further delegitimizes any Jewish claim on Israel. Unlike filmmaker John Pilger, who merely finds injustice only in actions by the United States and its allies (mainly Israel), Felton is the real thing, whose works can be found on viciously anti-Semitic Web sites and now, apparently, in the Jewish Western Bulletin.

His nauseating parallel between Nazi Germany and Israel offends history as well as sensibility. While one may take issue with Israeli policy, to make such an overall comparison requires a blinkered, one-sided view of Israel, as well as a rose-colored view of Nazism. This is clear in Felton's case; while some may take comfort in the fact that Felton obviously follows the local Jewish press, recall that Eichmann, too, visited Palestine and learned to speak Hebrew and Yiddish.

Please don't publish his rubbish again.

Henry Sporn
Vancouver

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