Unplugged Mike

New Letter in the Jewish Week

I finally got a letter into the Jewish Week after a number of unsuccessful attempts.

This one is in response to an article in which Nathan Laufer characterized Ariel Sharon as a latter-day Korach.

The extreme settlers and their allies have been writing in the most heated terms (guess I can't really blame them, since they're about to lose). I thought this particular op-ed was noticeable for being exactly 180 degrees from reality.


Sharon’s Legitimacy

Nathan Laufer has Korach and Moses mixed up (“Legality Vs. Legitimacy in Gaza Pullout,” Feb. 18). Today it is Sharon who is Moses, and the opponents of disengagement, some of whom are threatening to use violence to disrupt the government’s policy, who are Korach.

Mr. Laufer’s thinly veiled extremism leads him to compare Ariel Sharon, a democratically elected leader whose policies are supported by the majority of Israelis, with Henri Petain, a Nazi quisling —yet another regrettable instance of the extreme wing of the settlers and their allies comparing Ariel Sharon to a Nazi for evacuating Jews from Gaza.

It is time to end this incitement, and for people like Nathan Laufer to realize that it is they who represent the threat to legitimacy and legality in Israel, not Israel’s democratically elected, overwhelming popular leader.

Michael Brenner
Woodmere, N.Y.

posted by Michael Brenner @ 12:23 PM