Socialists must not encourage anti-Semitism

After I read that President Obama would double the number of American troops in Iraq, I went to a respectable socialist web site- which invites COMMENT on published articles in a true democratic spirit. Naturally, socialists everywhere oppose all reckless wars and imperialist military interventions. Some of the comments focused on the sinister plots of "Zionist Israel" in the usual, near paranoid way. I read: "The Zionists are masters of Deception".

The very language here reminded me of J. Edgar Hoover's lying, reactionary book "Masters of Deceit", a now dated Cold War classic. For Hoover every shade of PINKO socialist-communist was as loathsome to his "democratic", ALL-American bones as any lackey of the Kremlin back then.

Click here for YouTube link to this snippet from "The Ascent of Man"

Remember there are very many liberal -even socialist- Jews- who call themselves Zionists simply because they believe in the right of Israel to exist. I am sure they would prefer some peaceful way out of this seemingly hopeless, many decades long, Israel-Palestine conflict.

The very language of this conflict -on both sides- is increasingly GENOCIDAL. So we have to be careful with this word ZIONIST. It is beginning to sound hateful.

Likewise, how do you reason with poor, ignorant Palestinians who think THEIR Holy Book condemns the Jews as a people?

I recall the kindly Jewish scholar in the TV series "The Ascent of Man", kneeling on the very ashes of his relatives in a muddy stream at Auschwitz, he cries: "Certainty did this!"

All hateful fanaticism is inseparable from the arrogant belief that YOU alone are in possession of ABSOLUTE TRUTH.

"I beseech you.... you may be wrong!"

Submitted to: letters@providencejournal.com