In a recent March 23 letter in the PEI Guardian, Richard Deaton congratulated columnist Gwynne Dyer for his “courage in condemning the recent pogroms and massacres carried out by the Israeli IDF and settler vigilantes against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank towns of Nablus and Huwara.”
He then proceeded to make several false accusations including that “the Israelis act with impunity and behave like the Russians in Ukraine” and “Israel makes a mockery of Jewish values.”
On March 30 our Assistant Director, Robert Walker, was granted space in the Guardian to rebut these false allegations, including a comparison of Israel to the Nazis.
Letter misses some information
In his recent letter (Nauseating behaviour, March 23), Richard Deaton cited recent comments by Israel’s
Finance Minister, Betzalel Smotrich, where he called for the Palestinian village of Huwara (where recent deadly terrorist attacks have originated) to be “erased.”
What Deaton does not say is that Smotrich immediately and repeatedly walked back his abhorrent comments, apologizing and saying that they were an “emotional slip of the tongue,” given the recent Palestinian terror attacks which have killed a number of Israeli civilians. His comments were widely condemned in Israel, including by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who disavowed them.
Undeterred by these facts, Deaton dares to compare this to the Nazi destruction of a Czechoslovakian town in 1942, when hundreds of innocent civilians were gunned down.
Despite Deaton’s baseless claim of “Israeli atrocities and massacres,” and its alleged “genocidal policies, there is absolutely no truth whatsoever to these outlandish allegations.
While Smotrich’s words were indeed objectionable, they were immediately retracted, and in no way represent Israeli principles, let alone its actions. To compare them to the Nazi genocide in the Second World War is repugnant, irresponsible and inflammatory.
Robert Walker,
Assistant director,
HonestReporting Canada
