Brian Klug bemoans an "oppressive atmosphere" that limits, he asserts, his and his comrades' freedom of expression within the Jewish community in the UK (No one has the right to speak for British Jews on Is rael and Zionism, February 5).
As Klug is well aware, it is not the principle that is in dispute but the details. When critics of Israel's policies in the territories or in Lebanon, or in Israel itself, adopt a standard of moral inequivalency, ignore Arab sins, glide over major societal and cultural differences, fudge historical facts, forget legal rights and, in general, act in a street-gang manner, they should know that it is fair and just to question their Jewish identity, or, at the very least, cast doubt whether they are interpreting to the non-Jewish public what Jewish identity is and what is Jewish nationalism.
Yisrael Medad
Shiloh, Israel
My original text, the letter was edited, is here.
And while we are on the subject of letters, I found there this interesting one on another, but related, subject:-
Maleiha Malik (Comment, February 2) says "Churchill wrote that Jews were part of a 'worldwide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation'." This is a masterpiece of selection. Churchill at that time, 1920, was obsessed with the prospect of revolutions around the world directed from Moscow by the Bolsheviks, many of whose first leaders were indeed Jewish; they were the "bad" Jews he had in view, and that was the conspiracy. Because he regarded them as unrepresentative of the Jewish people as a whole, he took the trouble to distinguish them from "good" Jews whom he looked to for the economic development of Palestine (he was unusual among his class and kind in being a pro-Zionist) and whom he numbered among his friends. He was the least anti-semitic of all the Conservative grandees. If his views had really been what your quotation suggests, they would have been identical with Hitler's.
Geoffrey Best
Oxford
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