Once again, David Green has couched what otherwise might have been an interesting point in distasteful anti-Jewish rhetoric. From his letter (Nov. 1) I actually was able to glean a thought-provoking assertion, namely like members of any group that has a vested interest in the outcome of a particular discourse, certain Jews have publicly adopted stances that are more polemical than objective. However, in order to get at the meat of this contention, I had to trim away a surprising amount of gristle, much of which I (myself a Jew) found personally offensive.

Rather than addressing the response to Danavi’s letter on its own terms, he frames it in the context of a trend, suggesting that it was but one facet of the larger problem of “hysterical … hypocritical and ignorant” Jewish letter-writers in general. This framing is entirely inappropriate. First, Judaism is among the most internally divided religions of the world, and thus it is heuristically meaningless to speak of “The Jews” as a united group; in the second place such framing feeds, by implication, the ruinous flames of the argument for a ‘Jewish conspiracy’, which, through “hatemongering,” is supposedly manipulating public opinion to serve the Jews’ own nefarious purposes.

Why, Mr. Green, must you persist in articulating your beliefs with such rank and infuriating words? Would not your opinions be better received were you to express them in a manner that does not needlessly inflame your interlocutors? From where I’m sitting, your letters aren’t doing anything better than those of the “ignorant Jewish writers” you so deride, and I, for one, would be much more inclined to listen to what you have to say if you could express yourself in a cooler, more collected fashion.

Raif Melhado

senior in LAS