Editor:
Our Coast newspapers occasionally print letters and articles that uniformly condemn and demonize Israel. Many are riddled with self-serving inaccuracies and are reflective of a breathtakingly closed mindset - a slavish hewing to an unbalanced narrative that tars the Jewish state with a broad brush.
Robert L. Bernstein, founder of Human Rights Watch, recently decried his organization's drift from its original mission to "pry open closed societies, advocate basic freedoms and support dissenters. But recently it has been issuing reports on the Israeli-Arab conflict that are helping those who wish to turn Israel into a pariah state."
Amnesty International and the UN exhibit continuing anti-Israeli bias while stoking the Palestinians' sense of victimhood, shorn of any responsibility for their part in the conflict. The Ottawa Citizen's Leonard Stern contends that the UN and Human Rights Watch have "inverted the language of human rights to demonize Israel, conspicuously the lone democracy in the Middle East."
Brutal and repressive Arab regimes rule over some 300 million people and tolerate little or no internal dissent. Where, one wonders, is the gnashing of teeth and rending of garments by your letter-writing Israelophobes when Hamas executes those Palestinians who wish to live in peace with Israel?
Jan Michael Sherman
Halfmoon Bay
