Cheap slurs.

• Author: Rothschild, Matthew
• Position: Editor's Note - Editorial

Last month's Editor's Note and Comment drew a lot of negative reaction. It's been a long time since we've received so much critical mail--and so many cancellations. My predecessor, Erwin Knoll, used to say, "If we're not pissing someone off every month, we're not doing our job." So I take solace in that. But I also want to respond, since I wrote the offending material.

In the United States, it is almost impossible to criticize the policies of the government of the state of Israel without bringing an avalanche upon your head. This customary response serves to stifle debate, as many people conclude that the hassle--or the lost business--is just not worth it.

Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, did not back down. He and his organization denounced both Hezbollah and the Israeli military for committing war crimes this summer. For this, Roth, whose father fled the Nazis, endured the usual calumnies, as Rosa Brooks noted in a column in the Los Angeles Times. For instance, The New York Sun said he has a "clear pro-Hezbollah and anti-Israel bias," and accused him of engaging in "the delegitimization of Judaism, the basis of much anti-Semitism."

Roth responded appropriately. "The issue is not, as your editorial falsely states, 'Israel's right to defend itself,'" he wrote in a letter to the Sun's editor. "Rather, the issue is how Israel chooses to wage that defense. Casting cheap slurs of anti-Semitism ... does not change the fact that Israel, in the way it fights, is not taking all feasible precautions to protect civilians as required by international humanitarian law."

This month, we return to Israel and Lebanon, with an essay by Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery and an on-the-scene story by Beirut reporter Raed El Rafei.

One of the problems with the slur of anti-Semitism is that it ignores the vast gulf between those who raise legitimate moral objections...