Israeli, Palestinian conflict is not a genocide of one people by another
IN REFERENCE to Victor Stevens’s letter on January 15.
How do you respond to a mind as perverse as that of Stevens (When Palestinian equates to criminal)?
In his letter, Stevens refers to a remark made that during the Holocaust “it was worse being a Jew than a criminal” and wonders whether the word Jew could be changed to Palestinian.
Mr Stevens, never before in the history of mankind, has mass murder on the scale of the Holocaust been committed.
Never before, and not since, has an industry of death been developed with the sole purpose of wiping out an entire people.
The raison d’être of the Holocaust was to remove every Jew from the face of the earth, simply because he/ she was Jewish.
To consider changing the word Jew to Palestinian is to insinuate that Arabs and or Palestinians in Israel are treated as Jews were during the Holocaust.
Where are the gas chambers Mr Stevens? Where are the concentration camps? Where are the mass graves of those shot by firing squads?
The Israeli/Palestinian conflict is just that – a conflict between two peoples.
It is not the genocide of one people by a perpetrator, as was the Holocaust.
To ignore the role played by Palestinians in this conflict; to ignore suicide bombings, the car rammings and stabbings of Israeli citizens; to ignore the thousands of rockets fired into Israel and the underground tunnels that have been dug into Israel, all with the aim of murdering as many Israeli men, women and children as possible, is to see Jewish lives and Jewish security as inconsequential.
And because you, Mr Stevens, quite obviously do see Jewish lives as inconsequential, you are able, with no conscience, to stoop to the level of wondering whether a 94-year-old Holocaust survivor actually learnt anything from her experiences.
What exactly would you like her to have learnt, Mr Stevens?
That Jews cannot rely on anybody for their safety and security? That the world is permeated with racists who hate for the sake of hating?
And that those who share your “ideals” will do anything to invert the truth – even to the extent of comparing Israel to Nazi Germany. MONESSA SHAPIRO Joburg