Shooting ourselves in the foot

Readers’ complaints about ex-diplomat Ilan Baruch’s January 9 opinion piece “Sigmar Gabriel is right” (“Ex-envoy distorts the facts,” Letters, January 11) are highly justified and confirm the many complaints received via our voluntary advocacy network that some members of the Foreign Ministry are not talking the language of official government policy.

If Baruch’s opinions are widespread in the ministry, we are really shooting ourselves in the foot.

Two or three years ago, when we approached the Foreign Ministry on the subject of BDS, we were told that we should not get involved, as “we know how to handle the situation.” Recent history shows the ministry does not know how to handle the situation. Responsibility for BDS has since been assigned to Public Diplomacy Minister Gil Erdan. We have seen some action, but maybe it is too little too late.

However, The Jerusalem Post sees fit to publish opinion pieces about BDS such as “BDS blacklist punishes thoughtcrime,” which bears no reference to the aims of the organization as expressed by its founder, Omar Barghouti, about the “right of return” for refugees of the 1948 war and their progeny – a euphemism for destroying Israel by turning its Jews into a minority.

STUART PALMER Shoresh

The writer is chairman of CoHaV, a worldwide network of activists promoting the case for Israel.

Ilan Baruch writes that German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel is right in comparing the plight of the Palestinians to those who suffered under the apartheid regime in South Africa. Either Mr. Baruch and Mr. Gabriel have no clue about the apartheid regime or they have a myopic view of reality in the “occupied” territories.

The term “occupied” used in a pejorative, rather than literal, meaning has obscured the truth that the area referred to as the West Bank has never been sovereign Arab land. The plight of the Arabs has resulted from 70 years of their leaders’ rejection of a Jewish state in any part of Mandatory Palestine that had been designated as the Jewish homeland.

Whatever the complexion of current and past Israeli governments, it is the Palestinian leadership that has the means to emancipate its people. Until they achieve pragmatic leadership, their condition will remain.

MELVYN LIPITCH London/Tel Aviv