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

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I received an email from the Simon Wiesenthal Center earlier today, alerting me to an article its leaders had published in the Wall Street Journal. Below is the response I dispached.

Dear Sir or Madam:

I write to express my severe disappointment with your most recent communique in which you address, inter alia, the campaign to boycott Israel by the Presbyterian Church and others. Let me make it clear ab initio that I am an Israeli patriot and that, while I detest wars, Israel is the only country in the world I would ever even consider fighting and dying for.

However, Israel's behavior in the past several months is legally and morally indefensible. In the context of the "settlements freeze issue," the obstinacy, hubris, perfidy, not to mention blackmail and extortion, exhibited by our current administration are unparalleled. Even Iran does not deport itself in that manner, which is saying a lot. Since the inception of the conflict in the Middle East in the early 20th century, and even much before, we unquestionably had the moral upper hand. We have now lost it. The refusal to engage the Palestinians (who have had a comparatively moderate, functioning and effective government in the West Bank for a few years now) by insisting on pursuing the settlement enterprise--which any fool recognizes is ultimately doomed--is fast turning us into a genuine pariah, and rightly so. Whereas I have been able to readily defeat our adversaries' arguments on just about any topic in the context of the conflict they would raise (including the "humanitarian" flotilla, which was overflowing with armed terrorists), I am at a loss to even explain, let alone defend, Israel's acts on the settlements issue. Stubbornly persisting with Jewish construction on land that simply has no realistic chance of remaining under Israeli control in the long term is mind-boggling. It has nothing to do with Israel's security. Even if it was perfectly legal, which is at best highly dubitable, such construction is a monumental folly.

My issue with the SWC is that you have turned from a venerable institution fighting the most righteous cause in modern history, into a campaign outfit, pursuing an ignoble agendum. Defending Israel's right to exist and protect itself is one thing. Espousing the cause of some religious zealot who wants to live in a trailer in the midst of a hostile population on a piece of land that legally does not belong to him is quite another.

Nor does invoking some god or other help matters. There was no god anywhere in sight when half my family was being exterminated by the Nazis. If there is any type of god out there, which created the universe ex nihilo, he/she/it is quite certainly not bothered about what color flag flies over a miniscule speck of land on a tiny planet during this exiguous period of time, all of which are less than a drop in the ocean compared to the infinity of space and time.

I am now forced to withdraw my support from SWC. If you return to the vision of the late Simon Wiesenthal and return to the valiant Zionist cause, I will reinstate my support. Until then, you are no different from those insane hooligans spitting and shouting "Nazi" at our security personnel trying to evict them from their pathetic hilltop trailers.

Sincerely, &c.

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