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26 Av 5761 - August 15, 2001 | Mordecai Plaut, director Published Weekly
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NEWS
Observations: Antisemitism in England
by B. Rapoport

The following letter to the editor appeared in last Thursday's Ha'aretz newspaper in Israel.

"Israel is reported to be compiling a list of countries in which its officials might be in danger of arrest for war crimes allegations. Never mind officials -- all an ordinary citizen has to do is say `Israel' to get attacked by members of the public.

"I was queuing in a small London post office the other day and the clerk asked me where my parcel was going. When I replied, `Israel,' people in the queue started shouting abuse at me. An elderly man snarled, `Israel! Israel! You like Israel? Why don't you just go bloody live there, and hopefully get blown up by a bomb?' The other people in the queue laughed.

"As I left the post office, an even more elderly lady shouted at me, `The trouble is all you Jews sending money to Israel.'

"I then migrated to the wine shop, which I have frequented for twenty years. I asked the proprietor if he would be stocking the Israeli wine that has just won several medals at the Bordeaux Festival. Having never before been rude to me, he startled me by thundering, `I would never stock anything from Israel!'

"Feeling thoroughly persecuted, I ended up at the organic food shop, where I complimented the manageress on her stock of Israeli corn on the cob. Believe it or not, she said: `Israel? That must have slipped through the net! I'm removing it from the shelves. They are an apartheid state and they use Arab slave labor.'

"I asked her where she learned these fictions and she replied: `I read The Guardian and The Independent. (Britain's two most relentless Israel- bashing newspapers.)' It's little wonder one feels under siege. In Saturday's Guardian, Tony Evans advises readers to avoid visiting Israeli kibbutzim, where visitors become `cheap labor to subsidize the Israeli state, which has occupied Palestine for decades.'

"In London's Evening Standard this week, Edward Fox writes a scathing piece about Israel and " . . . the sheer ghastliness of a place like Tel Aviv." He writes Israeli coffee is so terrible that `it tells us more than reams of political analysis what the place is really like.'

"Israel's government, PR and tourism industry still have a lot of work to do to combat this relentless Israel-bashing. It should be inviting visitors to stay on kibbutzim and to enjoy the rich cultural life of Tel Aviv -- not to mention the great coffee."

 

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