Rebick should check her sources

Thursday, September 24, 2009

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Rebick should check her sources

National Post

I have to wonder how Judy Rebick arrived at the perception that the opposition against Naomi Klein's very own "vicious criticism" of Israel and Jews consists of a "pile-on of angry Jewish males." Were I to articulate that much of the opposition to Israel and Jews within Western academia and the Middle East consisted of a "pile-on of angry Muslim males," I know that I would be told that such a letter could not be published in the Post.

Ms. Rebick cites numbers provided by B'tselem without mentioning that this same organization collects its data from the websites and blogs of militant wings of terrorist organizations and the Palestinian police. An article in the Jerusalem Post points out that a separate IDF investigation of Cast Lead operations reported that there were "1,166 Palestinian casualties in the Gaza Strip, the majority of which (709) were terror operatives affiliated with Hamas and other groups." The IDF investigation also pointed out that "B'tselem's sources [have] a vested interest."

These "vested interests" referred to by the IDF complete the real picture of so-called Jewish anti-Israel activists like Naomi Klein and Judy Rebick. When Ms. Rebick writes that "[my Orthodox Jewish grandparents] never forced their religiosity on their children," she is implying that Judaism is to blame for crimes she attributes to the state of Israel, real or imagined. Both she and Ms. Klein forget the most important lesson of the Holocaust: that being kind to a stranger is one thing, but inciting him/her to anti-Jewish hatred is quite another.

This incitement is, I'm sure, what Bernie Farber has a problem with, along with all those other "Jewish males."

Michael Devolin, B'nai Elim Canada, Tweed, Ont.

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