Israel’s right

Re: Human Rights Not The Issue, letter to the editor, July 22. Since letter-writer Terry Greenberg apparently operates under the misimpression “singling-out” Iran is akin to “singling-out” Israel, allow me to explain why that equation is fallacious.

While Israel may, during the course of its continuing fight for survival, commit “human rights abuses” as the United Nations and its critics and enemies understand them (for example, by constructing “apartheid” barriers and checkpoints that have prevented Palestinian terrorists from entering Israel and wreaking havoc as they have done in the past), here’s the salient — and glaring — difference between the two countries: Iran is a totalitarian Shiite theocracy helmed by megalomaniacs who view the Jewish state as an alien and toxic presence in the Middle East and the world at large (which is not unlike how another megalomaniac, a German one, viewed Jewry in another time) and whose mantra “Death to Israel” and “Death to America.”

Israel is the region’s sole democracy that is looking to live in peace with its neighbours, including Iran. No one in Israel is chanting “Death to Iran.” That said, Israel has every right to defend itself against an implacable enemy that seeks its destruction and may soon have the nuclear means to follow through on its threats.

Mindy G. Alter, Toronto.