Merely a different truth

I confess that I find Gershon “One Note” Baskin’s Encountering Peace columns boring, monotonous and repetitive. His basic premise, that everything would be marvelous if only Israel would end its occupation of Palestinian land, is probably a tad too optimistic.

In “The past is beyond us” (January 18), Baskin takes a further step in his efforts to whitewash a Palestinian leader’s words and actions. He calls PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s two-hour libelous, lying, history-falsifying and antisemitic rant a different “truth” from the one “we [Jews] hold dear.”

To paraphrase Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s famous quote, everyone is entitled to his own opinions but not his own facts. Mr. Baskin and Mr. Abbas are entitled to their own opinions, but not to their own facts – or their own truths.

DAVID MANDEL

Savyon