Rodney Mazinter, Cape Town
Much ink is expended in accusing Israel of being an apartheid state, citing the checkpoints, the security fence, and segregated roads, but nothing is said about pass laws, forced segregation, anti-gay legislation, and racial laws, which don’t exist in Israel, but in surrounding countries. Critics focus on the border between sovereign Israeli territory and the disputed territories of the West Bank, ignoring the efficacy of controls that keep civilians from being murdered.
There are those who say that they are offended by Israel’s actions. I too am offended, not by trumped-up accusations of disrespect, but by more mundane things like the beheadings of civilians, cowardly attacks on public and private buildings, attacks on Westerners for the crime of drinking beer at their local pubs, suicide murders, murders of Christian priests in Middle Eastern countries, the burning of Christian churches and Jewish synagogues, the continued persecution of Coptic Christians in Egypt, the imposition of Sharia law on non-Muslims, the rapes of Scandinavian girls and women (called “whores”), the murder of film directors in Holland and elsewhere, and the rioting and looting in Paris, Brussels, New York, London, and Spain. This is what offends me and many, many of my friends.
