Accusation of antisemitism ludicrous
Re: “United Church panel on Israel a display of bias”, (Citizen, Oct. 24)
In her letter Ms. Black accuses this panel of inaccuracies and evasiveness without itemizing any examples.
Her accusation of antisemitism is ludicrous given that one of the speakers (me!) is Jewish. Her accusation that other countries’ human rights abuses were ignored is false: I specifically dealt with that issue in my presentation.
The only critique she makes which is valid is that the panel was biased. Of course it was. The very title of the meeting was “Israel Canada’s Human Rights exception”. We wanted to focus on why Canada, with its honourable stances against human rights abuses domestically and internationally, continually refrains from criticizing Israel’s human rights abuses, clearly documented by B’Tselem, Israel’s leading human rights organization and repeatedly discussed in one of Israel’s daily newspapers, Haaretz (co-published with the New York Times). Indeed Haaretz has repeatedly published items describing ‘Israel’s apartheid policies’.
Adrian Fine
Victoria
