Editorial
On rhetoric, dialogue and Haman

Purim is associated with fun, dressing up in outlandish costumes and getting a little - or more than a little - tipsy from various forms of alcoholic drinks. The stories and pictures on the front page and page 17 provide the flavour of numerous weekend Purim parties.

We have been flooded with pictures sent by shuls and institutions countrywide. Unfortunately we don’t have space to publish all, but our selection gives a taste.

Of course there is a deeper side to Purim, expressed in the megillah, to do with courage and loyalty to one’s people in the face of those who would destroy them. And with the ultimate demise of those who attempt to annihilate the Jews - the “Hamans” in the various forms in which they have appeared through the ages.

In a sense there is a new “Haman” striding the earth nowadays, growing rapidly more dangerous - the snowballing worldwide campaign to delegitimise Israel. It is no longer about whether Israel has done this or that deed, or whether it has behaved well in this or that situation. Rather, it is turning the clock back to 1948, to the creation of Israel itself and whether that was a defendable act.

This campaign, very evident on university campuses in the US, UK and Europe and increasingly taken up by trade unions and leftist groups - including Cosatu in South Africa - exudes dramatic rhetoric about Israel’s “evilness”, allowing no space for Israeli viewpoints themselves, apart from those Israelis who, for their own reasons, have also come to embrace that rhetoric - Israelis are “Nazis”, Israel is “an apartheid state”, Israel is guilty of “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity”, and so on. It is essentially one-way traffic. Some insights are described in the stories on pages 10 & 11.

This movement has become institutionalised in events like “Israeli Apartheid Week” which started on Monday in universities in some 40 cities around the world, calling for economic and academic boycotts of Israel. The event was started in 2004 by a group of students in Canada and has become a yearly fixture. As part of this in South Africa, a protest is due to be held today (Friday) outside the Israeli embassy in Pretoria.

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