Goldman has a lot of nerve

Editor: In your Aug. 29 issue, Rene Goldman castigates Stephen Aberle for going to Kelowna on the Shabbat before Shavuot and turning an audience of "poorly informed students at Okanagan University College" against Israel by talking about a "just peace" in the Middle East. ("What is a 'just peace'?" Bulletin Letters) He uses a quotation from Isaiah to identify Aberle as a destroyer and besmircher of Israel who "should go forth."

Even setting aside Prof. Goldman's condescension to the students involved – why are they necessarily "poorly informed"? – his language and arguments are intemperate. Why does he feel so threatened by the notion of peace with justice? Because he thinks "Israel has been singled out from among all the states of the world as a target of the unceasing, relentless campaign of demonization, orchestrated and financed by the Arab-Muslim coalition." Because there is a conspiracy of "the western media, notably the CBC and BBC," to spread "venemous propaganda" against Israel. And because the European Union finances the Palestinian Authority and Hamas.

I trust that these views are not representative of the Bulletin's editors or readers. Prof. Goldman might consider whether Israel is doing anything to Arabs and Muslims that would cause it to be "singled out," and whether the CBC and BBC really have it in for Israel, or are just more balanced than the Asper media and most North American coverage. He also needs to ask himself which policy is more likely to pacify the Palestinians: the European Union's, which funds those parts of the PA and Hamas that seem peaceful and constructive, or the Israeli-American strategy of keeping them impoverished? Goldman goes so far as to suggest that Aberle's "just peace" is that of the cemetery. But it is ethnic paranoia and extremism such as that which Goldman's letter exhibits that sends people to cemeteries before their time.

It takes a lot of nerve to try to bludgeon Aberle with Isaiah – or any of the prophets, whose role was to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted, and who often criticized the Israel of their time. A modern Isaiah would, I suspect, find the I.F. Stones, Noam Chomskys and Stephen Aberles of the world more to his taste than its Rene Goldmans.

Richard Bevis
Vancouver