[Peace-discuss] David Greens Letter in the NG, responding to a ridiculous Editorial by Jim Dey

[Karen Aram]

esday, March 21, 2017 52°F<http://www.news-gazette.com/weather> Today's Paper<http://eedition.news-gazette.com/>

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Home<http://www.news-gazette.com/> » Opinion<http://www.news-gazette.com/opinion> » Letters to the Editor<http://www.news-gazette.com/opinion/letters-editor>
Dey fails to see Israel's aggression
Tue, 03/21/2017 - 5:18am | The News-Gazette<http://www.news-gazette.com/users/digitalmedia>

This responds to Jim Dey's Feb. 28 column "You jerk! How dare you disagree with me?!"

I doubt many students fit Dey's caricature of rudeness. Nevertheless, civility is to be desired in pursuit of informative political discourse.

The irony presented by Dey, as usual, regards his jaundiced contribution regarding Israel. In 2014, he couched his opposition to academic freedom in terms of Steven Salaita's "anti-Israel" tweets. In the present case, Dey lobs a rhetorical Molotov cocktail into the divestment debate by asserting "Now bear in mind that Palestinians want to wipe Israel and all the people in it off the map."

This is comparable to saying that in the 1930s, Poles wanted to wipe Germany and all its people off the map.

Dey regularly shows that he is capable of committing investigative journalism. If he is interested in exploring the modern Middle East, he might start with Jewish Israeli historian Ilan Pappe's seminal "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine." The distinction between perpetrators and victims is as uncontroversial in this context as it was in Nazi Germany, or indeed in the "settlement" of our own country.

In this context, I would also note that Jewish communal leaders have no authority to speak for Jews, as is often implied in local coverage.

Specifically, the Chabad movement supports illegal Jewish settlements, while some other Jewish Orthodox sects do not. The same can be said for Jews of all religious and secular persuasions.

Moreover, moral authority is based on a record of truthfulness, not official status.

DAVID GREEN

Champaign
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