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."
