“Feared, loathed, and isolated.” An open letter to Peter Kosminsky

Adam Levick
CiF Watch
03 February '11

Mr. Kosminsky,

My initial skepticism over the objectivity of your multi-part drama to be aired on British TV which, as you say, strives to “come to an understanding of the most dangerous and intractable war of our age…the conflict between Arab and Jew in the Middle East”, called The Promise, seems warranted now that I’ve read your introduction to the film printed in the Guardian on January 28th.

You claim that, among the lessons you’ve learned from researching modern Israel, is that 60 years after the Holocaust:

“Israel is isolated, loathed and feared in equal measure by its neighbours, finding little sympathy outside America for its uncompromising view of how to defend its borders and secure its future.”

You then ask:

“How did Israel squander the compassion [derived from the horrors of the Holocaust] of the world within a lifetime?”

To this question, I’ll briefly ask an admittedly rhetorical one:

How dare you.

“Isolated”, you say?

Actually far from being isolated, my country is actually more economically entwined with Europe than we’ve ever been – the story of a tiny nation with little in the way of natural resources outperforming not only its neighbors, but some larger European nations as well. That Arab countries on our borders don’t wish to share in our relative prosperity, that 62 years after our birth those same Arab states continue in their self-defeating (either de facto or de jure) economic boycott of our country is not a reflection of our values, but rather of theirs. In nearly every measurable social, educational, and economic category, my country often wildly exceeds the performance of our oil rich neighbors. That my Israeli passport makes me persona non-grata in most of the Arab world is an indictment of their intolerance, their intransigence, their bigotry, not mine.

“Loathed”, you say?

(Read full "An open letter to Peter Kosminsky")

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