Open letter to Giorgio Napolitano, the president of Italy

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

By Manno Mauro
Online Journal Guest Writer

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_1707.shtml

<snip>

Mr. President, let me disagree with your first remark. You argue that the opposition to Zionism is a disguised form of anti-Semitism. One would be led to think that you meant to say that only some anti-Semites conceal their real anti-Semitism behind an alleged or false anti-Zionism.

You have formulated your thought in an unequivocal way: to you, the person who is anti-Zionist is an anti-Semite sic et simpliciter. I agree with you that anti-Zionism is the “rejection of the source of inspiration of the Jewish State and of the reasons for its very foundation,” but I firmly believe that the denial of the reasons of the Jewish state’s birth and its replacement with a sole democratic State for Jews and Palestinians throughout the entirety of Palestine might bring nothing but good to the Jews, the Palestinians and the Middle Eastern and peoples as a whole. I hold, and I am not the only one, given that many anti-Zionist Jews have the same opinion, that the Zionist state for Jews only is as racist, colonialist and expansionist an idea as was the South African racist state for whites only.

The Zionist nature of Israel is a menace to world peace and to Jews themselves.

Mr. President, I am not a Holocaust-denier and I do not nurture anti-Jewish feelings. I only want the Jews living in Palestine to not deny the Palestinians a right they claim for themselves. The Palestinians, both refugees and residents in Israel or in the Occupied Territories, have the right to live peacefully and in harmony in Palestine, enjoying the democratic freedoms that all the peoples of the world deserve. This principle we do not refuse to the Jews from Palestine, but it is denied by Israel to the Palestinians.

[Lithos]

1. Locking per I/P guidelines

Please use discretion when referencing obviously biased or factually questionable material. Vanity websites are generally not as credible as the New York Times, the Washington Post or the UK Guardian and are likely to be locked. A good rule of thumb is to ask yourself is the author readily identifiable and likely to be cited by the mainline world press or encountered in an alternate format (mass-published book, academic journal, newspaper article, radio or TV show).

Manno Mauro, who?