Sir, - Your editorial "Terrorism, not terror" (October 29) has several unforgivable distortions that raise serious doubts about the objectivity of its writer.
An editorial that justly portrays the murderous intentions and actions of the Palestinians and then devotes half of its content to the supposed sins of the Jews, settlers, rabbis, and crazies leaves the definite impression that there is moral equivalency between the two sides of the Arab-Israeli conflict. This is one of the major distortions that has already been adopted by the UN, the United States, and, above all, the murderous terrorists themselves.
It must be made quite clear to all that although we have some extremists in our midst, the murder of innocent Arabs never was and never will be part of our national program. It does not appear in our textbooks, We do not preach it in our synagogues, we do not name streets or stadiums after our 'terrorists' and there is no Jewish mother praying for the death of her son in order to reward him with the services of heavenly virgins. Not only do our people not joyfully celebrate the ugly acts of our miscreants, there is overwhelming national and individual condemnation of their behavior.
Another distortion in the editorial is the identification of the masked attacker of Rabbi Arik Ascherman as a "knife wielding settler," when it is still unknown who the attacker was. It would be equally unjustified to distort the presence Rabbi Ascherman at the scene for the purpose of aiding Arabs in their attacks against Jewish farmers.
The most disgraceful and unforgivable portion of the editorial, however, is that which contains completely unsubstantiated accusations against the national government, settlers, and the IDF:
"This is shamefully obvious in the official response to the persecution of Palestinian farmers by settlers, who deny them access to their to their farmland under the watchful eyes of nonintervening IDF troops."
These distortions serve to add fuel to the unconstrained hatred that surrounds our beleaguered state.
ZEV CHAMUDOT
Petach Tikva
