Entangled political, religious identities

LETTERS

When advocacy organizations claiming to represent Jewish interests intertwine “Israeli” and “Jewish identity,” it becomes well-nigh impossible to call Israel to task for its political crimes, or even speculate about its role in the dirty world of international politics, without being accused of some variation of antiSemitism.

This unfortunately is what seems to have happened in the recent crusade against the University of Lethbridge’s award-winning author and tenured professor of globalization, Dr. Anthony J. Hall. And yet he is not alone. Not long after Jimmy Carter published “Palestine: Peace not Apartheid,” even the globally respected American ex-president could not escape the charge of anti-Semitism.

While Dr. Hall is not exactly Carter, and while he has gone far beyond the Nobel Peace Prize winner in the crimes for which he holds the (self-identified) Jewish state responsible — treading into highly conjectural and contentious territory — the fact remains that his intellectual musings centre on politics, and have next to nothing to do with race or religion. And if they are interpreted as such, this is because those whom he accuses are unwilling to untangle political and religious identities, leading many outsiders to view this as a defensive mechanism to deflect criticism and silence open debate on some very important issues.

Seth Raymon

Lethbridge