Once again, columnist J.M. Sorrel (“New year, same madness,” Oct. 1) offers a cartoonish analysis of the current situation in the Middle East. “If you believe criticism of Israel is distinct from antisemitism, think again,” she writes. That will be news to the millions of Jews in Israel, America, and around the world who have been appalled by the policies pursued by the Netanyahu government. Their persistent protests give the lie to Sorrell’s claim, and to her continued campaign to reduce the struggle for Palestinian rights to just so much Hamas propaganda. But then, the writer has never showed much interest in the legitimate claims of the Palestinian people, or the impending disaster of West Bank annexation.
If every Palestinian is simply a Hamas stooge, does that also mean that every Israeli — or every Jew — supports the extreme, messianic, right-wing agenda of ethnic cleansing via expulsion of all Palestinians from “Eretz Israel?” Note, too, how comfortably her view dovetails with the Trump Administration’s cynical weaponizing of antisemitism in its disgraceful attacks upon our universities, our public institutions, and our freedom of speech. I am only one of millions of Jews who proudly reject her utterly false equivalence of criticism of Israel with antisemitism.
Daniel Czitrom
South Hadley