Name:     Michael L. S.   [E-Mail]
      Location:  Earth
      Website:  Middle East Resource Center

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Shalom rav!

I'm back after a glorious month's vacation in north Africa. It's been my second time to visit the region and I ADORE the place, especially Morocco and--my all-time favorite--Tunisia.

Now, a couple of months ago I received an email from the Simon Wiesenthal Center whose sponsor, incidentally, I am. For reasons of brevity, I won't quote the text here but you can find it verbatim here.

I don't make a practice of taking issue with such a noble organization in public, but I felt compelled to respond to the original email and hereby share with you what I told harav Hier:

"BS”D

"Dear R” Hier:

"I write in response to the latest SWC communiqué dealing with the allegation that Israel is an apartheid state and that we engage in crimes worse than those of the natzim.

"While Israel is certainly NOT an apartheid state, while attempts to draw parallels between the actions of our armed forces and the natzim are abhorrent, and while the pro-Palestinian rhetoric is all too frequently laden with flagrant lies, it is a fact that our policies in the occupied territories ARE based on national/ethnic segregation.

"There is perfectly no legal or moral justification (religious perhaps but, then, religion can be used to justify just about any perversity) for colonizing those lands and corralling the “other” people living there in ghettos with only very restricted ability to travel among those ghettos, never mind anywhere else.

"The SWC has been doing sterling work in bringing natzi beasts to justice but memoranda of this sort threaten to undermine your credibility and cast an indelible shadow on your previously morally-impregnable campaign and accomplishments.

"Since most of the natzi criminals are now dead, may I suggest that the SWC transform itself into an organization combating injustice and racism generally? Of course, that includes the injustice and racism we ourselves perpetrate. For any endeavor, which accuses our enemies of a wrong but is blind to those of us who similarly wrong others is ab initio bankrupt. So, therefore, is your latest email.

"I do hope you consider this email and thank you for taking the time and trouble to do so.

"Kol tuv uvhatzla7ah rabah,

"Michael Steiner"

Doubt he read it... - but I guess it's the thought that counts.

I know some will see my riposte as that of a "self-hating Jew" or even "self-loathing Jew" (the latter, of course, far more a sign of how much THEY loathe me than how much they think I supposedly despise myself--always bear in mind that I wear a kipah proudly on my head whereas they hide it beneath ridicuous-looking baseball caps). But isn't it funny, in a very perverse sort of way, whence such broadside typically emanates? You see, whereas once survivors of the Shoah and their descendants were seen as the epitome of human suffering worthy of all respect and deference, we are now increasingly being reviled. Why? Because we recognize that suffering is not exclusive to an ethnicity and that tears of a Palestinian are no less real than those of a Jew.

Indeed, our detractors go so far as to dismiss us as "bleeding heart sentimentalists" and "confudes [sic] Jew-haters" who "think all suffering is the same." (These are quotes from actual messages I've personally received specifically in the context of being the child of a Holocaust survivor.

That some prick from Brooklyn who came to the West Bank to play cowboys and Indians (or, some prick from Brooklyn, period) should assail on those of us who fight for our right to realize our 2000-year-old dream to exist as a "free people in our land of Zion" while concomitantly being acutely aware of our moral and ethical reponsibilities is outrageous.

But that's the perennial problem with religious freaks: there is no truth but their worldview, and those who dissent... - well, we all know what happens or should happen to us. That's why I always say that 7amas and the squatters would become best buddies very soon if they lived with each other. Forget evacuating the squatters from the West Bank; leave them there: betimes they'll be playing checkers and smoking shisha with their Islamic counterparts. Heck, if you hear the religious squatters talking about their vision of Israel, you realize it mirrors the political and social arrangements of the illustrious Islamic Republic. (For enhanced authenticity, compare ayatollah Yosef's apparel with those of harav Khamenei.)

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