Today’s Brookline TAB has a couple of letters to the editor blasting my op-ed last week about Joel Kovel’s planned talk at the Coolidge Corner Theatre. There’s also a column by former Brookline Selectman Skip Sesling, which has begun to generate its own comments, all supportive of him so far, on the TAB website.
I may submit a longer response to Sesling to the TAB, or at least a letter to the editor, but in the meantime I can point you to this response I wrote after he blasted me a few years ago on the same topic. His latest effort shows he continues to misquote and misinterpret at will.
The most mystifying part of his response is this accusation:
Fox finds that Israel, Jews, Judaism and Zionism are all one entity. He should know better. Instead, he chooses to paint everyone who does not agree with his anti-Israel views as evil.
Sesling has it backwards here: It is the Zionist movement that conflates Israel, Jews, Judaism, and Zionism, as in the title of his own op-ed: “Anti-Zionism equals Anti-Semitism.” Hard-core Zionists repeatedly insist that the Israeli state is an inherent and essential aspect of Judaism. Israel repeatedly claims its actions are carried out “in the name of the Jewish people.” It is those of us who no longer consider ourselves Zionists who believe Jewishness and Zionism are, or should be, two different things.
More another time.
Technorati Tags: Skip Sesling, Israel, Joel Kovel, Zionism