My letter to the NYTimes RE An Anti-Semitism of the Left by Roger Cohen

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (10 December 1948) sets out, for the first time, fundamental human rights to be universally protected.

RE: An Anti-Semitism of the Left
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/08/opinion/an-anti-semitism-of-the-left.html?ref=international&_r=0

Dear Editor,

It is totally tragic that your columnist, Roger Cohen, is so quick to make excuses for and help perpetuate modern Israel's deluded obsession with being "Jewish", a misguided and dangerously myopic obsession that has motivated Israel to cruelly oppress, impoverish, displace and push into forced exile countless native non-Jewish men, women and children. It is also totally tragic that some very misguided and dangerously myopic people have decided to support Hamas and Hezbollah.

Yes there is most definitely "the fundamental link between murderous European anti-Semitism and the decision of surviving Jews to embrace Zionism in the conviction that only a Jewish homeland could keep them safe" as Cohen says... But the world was very different in the 1930s in many many ways. Most people then simply did not understand the perils of racism, and the scientific inaccuracies that shaped racist thought. 

Take into account the fact that in 1948, when Israel declared itself "The Jewish State", America had yet to hear Martin Luther King's inspiring 1963 speech "I have a dream", which points out and objects to "the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination."

In today's more enlightened world, it is international law and The Universal Declaration of Human Rights that helps keep Jewish men, women and children safe.  The Universal Declaration of Human Rights should also help keep Palestinians safe, but Israel refuses to be a Golden Rule thinker when it comes to the native non-Jewish men, women and children of the Holy Land.

The crucial importance of ending bigotry and injustice is a universal need, a universal need that is not and never should be limited to one particle race, religion, or gender.

Rather than being mired in blame games and paranoia about "The Left" or Jews, or Arabs and Palestinians, or blacks or whites or what ever let us keep in mind what President John F. Kennedy wisely pointed out in 1958: "Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future."

Sincerely,
Anne Selden Annab

Notes
The Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you