If you are an anti-Semite don't let facts get in your way

In a letter to the Listener (August 18) James McNeish wrote that "the toxin of anti-Semitism existed in every gentile" and this appears now in the guise of anti-Israel sentiment. This anti-Israel sentiment manifests itself in the defacing of John Key's election hoarding with the "Lying Jew" message, as it does in Europe with chants such as "Death to the Jews" and "Hamas, Hamas - Jews to the gas". McNeish expressed regret for the "death of innocent Palestinians" but attributed responsibility to the Palestinians in Gaza who elected a government bent on the destruction of Israel and "whose rocket barrage is a continuation by other means of Hamas' suicide bombings inside Israel since 1994" This well reasoned argument brought out the the anti-Israelis, who denied being anti-Semites, played loose and fast with facts. Diane Baguley of Onehunga, Auckland, blames Israel for not taking a "more principled path in seeking its place as a Middle Eastern country". She makes no reference to the offers of Barak, and later of Olmert conceding almost all of the Palestinians' demands, only for the Palestinians to walk away from a negotiated agreement. Peter Vogt of Tauranga claims that the rockets fired at Israel are the result of the "occupation and the internationally respected right of victims to fight back". He doesn't know, or is willfully ignorant, that there are no occupying troops in Gaza, they were withdrawn in September 2005. As to the victims' right to fight back, if you fight you can get hurt. You can't complain. The anti-Israeli anti-Semites keep lining up. It this week's Listener, Robert Lawrence of Tauranga claims that far from being an anti-Semite, his much loved aunt, Helene was Jewish, his father was a supporter of the Zionist cause, his cousin worked on a kibbutz in Israel, and because of these Jewish connections, he assumed the right to criticize the Israeli military as"utterly indifferent to loss of civilian life" though the New Zealand media covered the efforts of the Israeli forces to warn civilian residents to vacate buildings about to be bombed, not a sign of any indifference. He writes about the "ruthless dispossession of whole communities and their concentration into marginal ghettos". True, 76 years ago, in the course of a brutal war, some Arabs were driven out, dispossessed, and so were many Jews. But their concentration into marginal ghettos is fanciful fiction. To add colour to this fiction, he compares Gaza to the Warsaw ghetto. Please Mr. Lawrence, take the trouble to learn about the Warsaw ghetto and the conditions there before you let yourself get carried away with your rhetoric. And when you write about Israel's "military repression" think of the dozens of Palestinians executed in Gaza by Hamas or its supporters without a fair trial, just because they were accused of treason. The language of anti-Semites has changed, but the underlying message is the same. They hate uppity Jews who instead of accepting their persecuted status and bowing to the oppression of goyim, fight back and if they are forced to fight dirty they don't get too squeamish.