The following is an example of pro-Israel letter support-enjoy the read.
Dear Editor,
In his recent letter to the Guardian,
Nikolai Smith suggests that Israel is a “systemic threat to peace and
democracy in the region.” The reality is that Israel is, in fact, the
region’s only bright spot for peace and democracy. Several respected
non-governmental organizations (NGOs) produce annual reports which rank
the human rights, both civil and political, that each country provides
its citizens and all of these NGOs give Israel the highest marks, by
far, among the 22 countries of the Middle East including the territories
governed by the Palestinian Authorities such as Gaza, which is ruled by
Hamas and areas within the West Bank, where the Palestinian Authority
governs. The annual report of the most respected of these NGOs, Freedom
House International, consistently designates only one Mideast country as
providing its citizens full freedom. That country is Israel. Similarly,
other NGOs such as Democracy Ranking, Carleton University’s Country
Indicators for Foreign Policy, World Democracy Audit and others all put
Israel far ahead of all her Muslim neighbors in all categories including
gender equality, freedom of press, religious freedom, access to
justice, political freedom, etc.
In fact many of Israel’s
neighbors including Syria, Egypt and Saudi Arabia populate the list of
countries that are the greatest violators of human rights. Smith should
stop to ponder what this means — that among the 350 million Arabs in the
Mideast, the ones who enjoy the greatest freedoms are the 1.5 million
Arabs that happen to live as citizens of Israel.
No surprise
then that polls of Israeli Arabs consistently reveal that, despite the
challenges they face as a minority, an overwhelming majority of them
would choose to continue living in Israel over any other Arab country in
the region, including a future independent Palestinian state. If he
really wants to encourage peace and democracy in the region, Smith
should work to encourage other countries in the Mideast to model
Israel’s democratic ideals.
—Shlomo Dubnov
Professor, Department of Music
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