Bigotry: James Adler on Israeli Racism

Sir, - Two aspects of James Adler's letter of March 18, I feel are in need of an appropriate response. The first seems to be his warped view of Justice. Under the guise of being fair to both sides, he repeatedly makes the point 'yes, rockets are evil' etc., but complains that the side that he admits to being the aggressor suffers more casualties than the side that they wanted to destroy. It would appear that his strange sense of 'fair play', would only be satisfied if confrontations between the police and criminals resulted in an equal number of casualties for both sides.

The second aspect is far more invidious and indeed unforgivable. He insidiously attributes the disparity in the number of casualties to a racist motivation, by twice describing the enemy as being 'brown'. This totally gratuitous, malicious, and mendacious release of the ugly genie of skin color, is evidently due to Adler's inability to explain the asymmetry by other far more compelling reasons. Adler is most comfortable to accuse Israel and the IDF of acting from the basest of motivations, and thus reveals himself to be not only a shallow thinker, but one willing to resort to bigotry.

ZEV CHAMUDOT
Petach Tikva