Negative comments

The reader may have the impression that I have only received positive comments in response to my blog. In fact, I have had three negative comments, two via a mail list that I am a member of, and one via email.

The one via email was from someone who I expected to be better informed about the history of the Middle East - a Canadian resident with an Honours Degree in History and Political Science. His only counter-argument was that I have an "utter lack of knowledge and understanding about the Holocaust, the Second World War, the history of the Middle East, and modern world problems".

The two critics on the mail-list also had no real counter-argument to any of my points. One simply said that "I disagree with 85/90% of what you have written", while the other one accused me of being anti-semitic and couldn't understand what I meant by the Israeli reaction being "disproportionate".

Well, I wonder if my Canadian critic would accept this link (admittedly biased) as an example of what lies behind the current friction between the Palestinians and the Israelis, or will our esteemed historian dismiss it as "terrorist propoganda"?

Our esteemed historian also found my comparison of Israel to the activities of the WWII NAZIs difficult to stomach - this is a view shared by many, for example;

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/742707.html
"Sir Peter Tapsell, a Tory MP, said Tuesday that British Prime Minister Tony Blair was "colluding" with U.S. President George W. Bush in giving Israel the okay to wage "unlimited war" in Lebanon - a war crime he claimed was "gravely reminiscent of the Nazi atrocity on the Jewish quarter of Warsaw."

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/UN/israel_un.html
"In July 2005, Jean Ziegler, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, called the Gaza Strip “an immense concentration camp” and compared Israelis to Nazis."

http://www.alfredlilienthal.com/sanctions.htm
"WHAT HE [Dr. Alfred M. Lilienthal, American-Jewish historian, journalist, and lecturer] SAW MADE HIM HEARTSICK. HE DESCRIBED THE BEGIN GOVERNMENT AS USING "NAZI POLICY" TO RID THE WEST BANK AND EAST JERUSALEM OF PALESTINIANS JUST AS THE NAZIS HAD TRIED TO MAKE EUROPE "JUDEN REIN."[Jew-free]"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3742365.stm
"Israeli Justice Minister Yosef "Tommy" Lapid stunned Cabinet colleagues on Sunday by saying a picture of an elderly Palestinian woman searching through rubble reminded him of his grandmother. Mr Lapid is a Holocaust survivor. His grandmother was not. She died in Auschwitz."
[Lapid denied that he intended to compare Israeli actions with NAZI actions, but whether he intended to or not, the comparison was made].

I could go on, but my point is already made - even some Jewish people (some of them Israeli) agree with my comparison.

Joe McGonagle