I was shocked some time back when Yitzhak Rabin was Prime Minister of Israel and one of the most decent of the lot when a human rights group in which I was participating had the issue of Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians arise. I was shocked to discover that I was the only non Jew (about even numbers of Jews and non Jews) who did not connect anti-Semitic dispositions with their criticisms of Israel’s misconduct on the relatively minor matters then.

This was a group of people who would never say apart from friends that they were drawing this connection, but it left me with the sense that many people are silently making it today. We have, of course, the apocalyptic Christians who want Israel restored to bring back the second coming, but most are quite candid that only converts to Christianity in Israel will not be damned.

Few pols are willing to risk this connection with or even loudly voice criticisms of Israel. But this it does not bode well for the future. I was a child of WW2 and horrified to learn of the Holocaust. I have more Jewish in-laws than others. I am particularly worried about anti-Semitism both here and around the world. The horror stories of Gaza, etc. are terribly destructive of good will towards Israel. Its military tactic towards enemies has been to destroy as much as they can. And with the destruction of infrastructures comes the loss of innocent lives.

I don’t like posting a blog of this nature, but I think some of us have to tell it as we see it.
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“A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope.” (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
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Ed Kent [blind copies]