I appeal to your newspaper to publish a more complete version of events surrounding the proposed Anglican boycott of Israel ("Anglican group proposes boycott of Israel, firms," Sept. 26, page 6). The proposed boycott shows incredible hypocrisy -- the sort to which Taiwan itself has often been subjected by the world. It is Israel that offered [Palestinian President Yasser] Arafat a state in September 2000. Arafat and his cronies responded with war. Why blame Israel for repeated Arab rejections of peace?
That rejection started in 1948 with the Arab invasion and continues today. Arafat's war of the last four years has made it crystal clear that he and most of the Arab world can never accept the Jewish right to self-determination in any shape or form. The struggle is not over Palestinian rights -- but over tiny Israel's right to exist in any form.
Why has the Anglican Church remained silent during the Sudanese government's 20-year war that killed 2 million black Christians and Animists in the South? Why has it not threatened divestment from Sudan over the ethnic cleansing of Darfur, including the deaths of 50,000 people? Why has it remained silent over [former Iraqi president] Saddam Hussein, or the persecution of Christians and Jews in the Middle East? It never threatened either Egypt or Iraq with divestment.
Why has the Anglican Church failed to threaten Iran or Syria for their brutal regimes and support of terror? Compared to any of its neighbors, Israel appears a model democracy. With this background, the reason for this hypocrisy becomes clear: it is to appeal to Arab nations. It has nothing to do with justice.
If Anglicans really wanted justice, they would demand rights for the millions of Israelis whose parents and grandparents were Jewish refugees from Arab lands. If they were fair, they would stop punishing Israel for absorbing and uplifting millions of Jewish Israelis whose parents fled Iraq, Yemen, Algeria and other countries. They would also stop rewarding Arab nations for keeping a similar number of Arab refugees stateless -- while siphoning billions of dollars in UN aid that could help real victims in Darfur and elsewhere. They would stop sympathizing with suicide bombers and demand responsibility from the Palestinian leadership.
D. Lubinsky
Atlanta, Georgia
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