To the editors:
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Telling us that he is “sick of the self-involved whining and self-absorbed demand for attention concerning the Holocaust” of those featured in two recent Reader articles [Our Town, May 4, and “Children of the Holocaust,” July 6], the anonymous letter-writer seems to be giving us clues to his own “fetishes” far more than responding objectively to those texts. And his request to have his name withheld because “you can still be persecuted for [your opinions] by the Zionist scum” strikes one as driven by hatred and something akin to paranoia more than by rationality.
Attempts to help the Reader’s audience understand the past and present are ill served by a letter which insists that the Jewish people, the Nazis’ major targets, are in fact their heirs. That is an outrageous, insulting, and inflammatory charge, whatever its source.
Jewish Community Relations Council
As the author of the July 6 article, I would like to make three points of clarification. Carlos Rizowy is an apologist for the policies of Israel. This is a fact, not a political phrase. I suggest you look up the word in a dictionary. Secondly, Israel is criticized for pushing people out of its way. Whether or not the criticism is justified is not the point of the article. The criticism does exist. Thirdly, I did not write that Israel is responsible for terrorist attacks. I wrote that Israel is the victim of terrorist attacks. An editing misunderstanding at the Reader reversed the sense of that sentence.
