Letters to the Editor
Financial Times
Dear Editor,
Any visitor to Israel knows that it is not a segregated society. Arabs and Jews study together, work together in hospitals, factories and farms and sit side by side on the Supreme Court. Of course many in the three religious communities, Jews Muslims and Christians choose to live in areas that are predominantly made up of their own people, but these living conditions are not mandated by the state and are not unknown in other countries like the UK and the U.S.A.
The Jerusalem Post just published the results of a poll “in which it was discovered that only 7% of Israeli Arabs define themselves as ‘Palestinian’. According to the survey, about a quarter of Israeli minorities (23%) define themselves primarily as “Israeli” and another half (51%) define their identity as “Israeli-Arab”. One would think that if Israel’s Arabs lived in a segregated society, they would not want to be associated with the state.
The Financial Times column is one of many written by well-known anti-Israel activists using the COVID-19 pandemic as a platform to delegitimize Israel. None mention that Israeli doctors are teaching Gazan doctors how to handle the pandemic. None have reported on the anger within the BDS community resulting from the declaration by BDS founder Omar Barghouti that the boycott would not extend to Israeli medical discoveries that could protect people from the virus. Many in the BDS world assert that they would rather die than accept help from Israel. Criticizing Israel’s medical system when many who would benefit from it would rather die than be assisted is the real story that I invite the Financial times to publish.
Sincerely yours,
Larry Shapiro,