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Goldberg's Times Column

I don't have time now to post a detailed response to Jeffrey Goldberg's latest defamation of Jewish residents of Judea, Samaria and Gaza, which appears in today's New York Times.

I'll post something more detailed in the next few days; for now I will simply post the letter to the editor I have e-mailed to the Times. Unfortunately, the Times has only once published a letter from me - a September 2002 letter about Orthodoxy in the Upper West Side - and only after editing it to eliminate much of my point.

In the letter I referred to Judea and Samaria as "the West Bank," because to do otherwise would eliminate the small chance it will be published.

Anyway, here's the letter I sent this morning:

Dear Editor,

As an Orthodox Jew, I absolutely agree with Jeffrey Goldberg that Israeli extremists who spew invective and threats toward Ariel Sharon must be unequivocally condemned (“Protect Sharon From The Right,” August 5).

It is important to emphasize, however, that the fanatics are not representative of the overwhelming majority of Jewish residents of the West Bank and Gaza. Goldberg points out that Avi Dichter, the chief of Israel’s internal security service, believes that 150-200 Jews wish to see Sharon dead. Dichter explained that his warning was referring to far-right extremists who are not representative of the settler public.

Indeed, according to a recent poll by Haifa University’s National Security Studies Center that asked whether violence could ever be justified as a last resort to prevent the government from implementing an objectionable policy, only 2.2 percent of Jewish residents in the West Bank and Gaza believe that any such situation could arise. Clearly, most settlers who oppose Sharon’s plan to dismantle settlements also oppose the idea that violence can be a tool to prevent the plan’s implementation.

Joseph Schick
posted on 8/05/2004