OPINION:
Peter Bella is absolutely spot on in his assessment of the Israel Apartheid Week movement (“Israeli Apartheid week contributes to hatred,” Web, Feb. 25).
Coming at a time when the Syrian government is massacring its own people, massively aided by Iran; when Christians throughout the Mideast, except in Israel, are increasingly under siege; when fleeing East Africans are heading for Israel, and when serious human-rights abuses abound around the world, Israel Apartheid Week participants are grotesquely misguided.
For more than six decades under the guns of its neighbors, Israel became not a garrison state but a flourishing democracy, an extraordinary source of technical innovation and assistance to developing nations. It is routinely among the first responders to natural disasters worldwide, despite its tiny size. It deserves not derision but praise.
While the ill-informed, overly impressionable students, radical faculty and aging activists at the gatherings make lots of noise, in the end, they have neither the numbers nor the facts on their side.
RICHARD D. WILKINS
Syracuse, N.Y.
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