My response to a reader who sent me a hate filled diatribe by Anne Bayefsky the director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust accusing the UN and Obama of treachery for allowing the vote condemning Israeli settlements.

Dear …

The betrayer here is Israel. It's a betrayal of the victims of the Holocaust by a land grab which has squandered the biggest reservoir of empathy a country could hope for; a betrayal which today threatens its very existence.

In now linking its fate to a feckless, depraved opportunistic man, instead of reflecting on what its real friends, like President Obama are trying to do, it risks its imminent destruction, the third  and possibly the last.

Israel's actions are Deuteronomy-like extremism minus the actual call to genocide. It must be condemned by all if it will bring the country to its senses before it is too late.  Just like Islamic extremism must be condemned by both believers and unbelievers if we are to have any hope.

Bernard