Guest columnist Jonathan P. Levin: Column on Israel, antisemitism ‘dehumanizing’

It is so distressing to me to read JM Sorrell’s column, “Terrorism apologists or useful idiots?” in the June 4 Gazette. I don’t know if I’m more distressed at the content of the column, and its invective, or at the Gazette for publishing it. I hardly know where to start concerning the content of the column. I have no bone to pick with Sorrell’s support for the state of Israel. I do have a bone — many, in truth — to pick regarding her condescension, her denigration, her disdain for people who hold views different from hers regarding the Palestine-Israel horror.

One bone is her careful curation of historical information to make it appear that the troubles in the area are somehow all due to the Palestinians, and Israel, or the government of Israel, is without responsibility, is innocent. She cites the Palestinians using civilians as shields. Does that justify the slaughter of tens and tens and tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians, many — I’ve heard , most — of whom were children? I have heard it reported that in Israel, there are many military facilities located in or near residential areas. Would that make it OK for Palestinians who believe they are fighting for their survival to bombard those residential neighborhoods?

Sorrell writes of Jake Wallis Simon’s claim that the “Israelophobic movement” has given Zionism negative connotations. Does she not believe that people who are anti-Zionist — Theodore Herzel himself was for a period — might come to that position through their own investigations and learning and thinking? She paints with an awfully broad brush. I’m not here to argue sides. I could cite many Israeli politicians saying they essentially want to wipe the Palestinians off the face of the Earth. I could Google the history of the “Settler Movement” and it’s violence against Palestinians and theft of their homes and present it here. I could describe the origins of Zionism in, according to one history, the desire of European nations to get rid of their Jewish populations. But that is not my purpose in writing.I’m not writing to argue history.

My purpose in writing is to convey my sadness at Sorrell’s dehumanizing and dismissal of Palestinians and her presentation of anti-Zionist Jews as deluded somehow, rather than as fellow human beings — fellow Jews, even — with minds and hearts and experiences of their own from which they have formed their own understanding, their own perspective, often as passionate and well-intentioned as hers, of the awful situation in Palestine-Israel. And to convey my surprise that she would write in this way, as she has so often in the past written in support of those in our country who are discriminated against, denigrated, disenfranchised. Too, it’s a bit of eyebrow-raiser that someone who so passionately lays claim to support for Judaism does not seem to support possibly the Ur-phenomena of Judaism —  Argument and Disputation.

As well, I am writing to wonder about what the Gazette is doing in publishing this column. I don’t wonder at the editors wanting to present a variety of views, and even strong views strongly expressed. But I wonder at publishing a column so filled with, as I said above, vituperation, denigration, condescension, dismissiveness, dehumanization, of Palestinians, of Muslims, and of Jews who do not hold the writer’s positions. It seems so out of character for this paper which strives so mightily to present the community to itself — ourselves — and to do so in a way that is comprehensive, considered, respectful, thoughtful, and generous. This column is hardly the last of those.

Jonathan P. Levin lives in Northampton.