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September 19, 2003
Goldman has a lot of nerve
Letters
Editor: In your Aug. 29 issue, Rene Goldman castigates Stephen
Aberle for going to Kelowna on the Shabbat before Shavuot and turning
an audience of "poorly informed students at Okanagan University
College" against Israel by talking about a "just peace"
in the Middle East. ("What is a 'just peace'?" Bulletin
Letters) He uses a quotation from Isaiah to identify Aberle as a
destroyer and besmircher of Israel who "should go forth."
Even setting aside Prof. Goldman's condescension to the students
involved why are they necessarily "poorly informed"?
his language and arguments are intemperate. Why does he feel
so threatened by the notion of peace with justice? Because he thinks
"Israel has been singled out from among all the states of the
world as a target of the unceasing, relentless campaign of demonization,
orchestrated and financed by the Arab-Muslim coalition." Because
there is a conspiracy of "the western media, notably the CBC
and BBC," to spread "venemous propaganda" against
Israel. And because the European Union finances the Palestinian
Authority and Hamas.
I trust that these views are not representative of the Bulletin's
editors or readers. Prof. Goldman might consider whether Israel
is doing anything to Arabs and Muslims that would cause it to be
"singled out," and whether the CBC and BBC really have
it in for Israel, or are just more balanced than the Asper media
and most North American coverage. He also needs to ask himself which
policy is more likely to pacify the Palestinians: the European Union's,
which funds those parts of the PA and Hamas that seem peaceful and
constructive, or the Israeli-American strategy of keeping them impoverished?
Goldman goes so far as to suggest that Aberle's "just peace"
is that of the cemetery. But it is ethnic paranoia and extremism
such as that which Goldman's letter exhibits that sends people to
cemeteries before their time.
It takes a lot of nerve to try to bludgeon Aberle with Isaiah
or any of the prophets, whose role was to afflict the comfortable
and comfort the afflicted, and who often criticized the Israel of
their time. A modern Isaiah would, I suspect, find the I.F. Stones,
Noam Chomskys and Stephen Aberles of the world more to his taste
than its Rene Goldmans.
Richard Bevis
Vancouver
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