Noam Bercovitz to Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey

Dear Mr. Bancroft-Hinchey,

Thank you again for taking the time to reply to my comments. I want to begin my reply to yours with a sincere apology: please forgive my ignorance and insensitivity by taking you for a Brit.

I want to focuse in this message on one issue that may have hurt your feelings the most: me defining you an anti-Semite and a racist. It's true you claimed that you're not, but I don't think it's a quality one can claim for himself, but a norm one has to comply too, and to my humble observation, you don't.

In order not be taken as a racist one should firstly aviod using racist replicas, such as "some of my best friends/wife/ect are Jews".

Secondly, one should avoid attaching general personal qualities to a whole nation. For instance the phrase "The Irish are drunks" is a racist one, because not all, even not most of them are, though certainly some are, like some Jews and some Russians too. Racism is illegal in Israel and saying in public something like "the Arabs are murderous cunning double crossers and its evident from their history" could put me in jail for a few months.

Thirdly, to avoid being called a racist one should avoid discriminating against one nation only, and find it solely responsible for all the wrongs of the world, from the crucifixion of Jesus to the sufferings of the Palestinians. One, especially a self proclaimed learned journalist, should at list be aware of the fact that to every story there may be more then one angle, and more then one point of view.

Fourthly, one shouldn't discriminate against one nation only by denying it the rights he willingly gives all other nations, for example, the right of self determination. This very point stands at the center of a long and bitter debate is Israel, where the extreme right denies the right of the Palestinian people for self determination.

I hope I made my point clear without hurting your feelings even more. You must understand that anti-Semitism is a disease, and sometimes one doesn't realize he's got it. I felt obligated to point it out to you because you write to many people and with this privilege come some responsibilities too. You also sound like a bright and sensitive person, who may have, eventually, good influence on his surroundings. And in fact, in comparison to some of your colleagues at Pravda.Ru, for instance Sergey Stefanov who wrote today about the "Holocast Mith", you're a true lover of Zion. All the best

Noam Bercovitz