Long live freedom of speech at Herzlia

THE Jewish community has unleashed a severe backlash against the Jewish students who protested at the playing of the Israeli national anthem at the Herzlia Middle School in Cape Town.

The students kneeled during the national anthem. We remember the backlash against constitutional Judge Richard Goldstone, who wrote a report on the Israeli bombing of Gaza and was ostracised to the point that he wasn’t allowed to attend his own grandchild’s Barmitzvah unless he retracted his findings.

This same lobby who cannot tolerate free speech in an open democratic society want to convince us that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East and that they allow Palestinians freedoms in an open democratic state when they cannot tolerate two young pupils exerting independent thought and free speech. Incidents like that at Herzlia Middle School have shattered the myth of this freeloving egalitarian state called Israel.

EMMANUEL PEEK Glenwood