History lesson
Right vitriol
THANKS TO Abdullah Drury for our history lesson (Letters, August 24). The creation of Israel in 1948 may not have been pretty for some but perhaps our historian might let us know of one that was.
The arrival of the Pakeha was not pleasant for the Maori. In Australia it was terrible. America the same. And the English Empire was started by the robbing of the Spaniards who were robbing Latin America. England in turn was dismissed by Julius Caesar with the world’s greatest ever put down: ‘‘I came I saw I conquered.’’ So we could blame Caesar for all the disharmonies of the world, including the Israeli conflict, but it goes back much further than that.
Homo sapiens wiped out Neanderthal man entirely. Should Neanderthal man find himself recreated I am sure he would have something to say about that. Perhaps ‘‘I have been dead for 100,00 years and it’s your fault’’ and he would have a point.
Abdullah might be a fine historian but he might not have fully grasped the lessons of history and his place within it. THE Star-Times has always had a good coterie of columnists but, with the election coming, why should several of them feel that it is a good time to castigate the current New Zealand Government?
Rod Oram can always be expected to poke the borax at National but I would have thought that the great and gentle Grant Smithies would be above such shenanigans. Yet last week he put his Leftish heart on his sleeve and waxed eloquent against National. Megan Nicol Reed came through with an anti-Right diatribe (admittedly based on Australian party politics), but for unmitigated vitriolic antiNational prejudice no-one could beat Lynda Halliman.
Why should such talented journalists as the above four take such a bias against the Right? Why should they think that readers should heed any of their personal political preferences? Everyone gets a vote and should be left to make up their own minds, just based on fair objective comment. I will now have to try to cancel out their votes with mine. A pity that I can’t vote four times!