To the editor:
Re: Geoff Olson cartoon, Dec. 23.
In an era when Middle Eastern Muslims are attacking Christians throughout the Middle East, including in the once majority-Christian town of Bethlehem, your cartoon showing Joseph and Mary stopped by an Israeli anti-terrorism wall is not just in bad taste -it is anti-Semitic.
Your paper does not cover world events; so why would you choose this cartoon for Christmas? The answer is that like anti-Semites everywhere you seem to care not about the ethnic cleansing of Coptic Christians by Muslims in the supposed Arab "spring" in Egypt, the driving out of more than half of Iraqi Christians and the bombing of 54 churches there or the persecution of Christians in every majority Muslim country in the world. Instead, your Christmas commentary deals inappropriately with Israel's attempts to protect its citizens from suicide bombing by a wall. The fixation on Israel (a country explicitly under the threat of genocide by its neighbours) and the portrayal of Israel blocking Joseph and Mary at Christmas when Israel is the only liberal democracy in the Middle East and the only one that allows religious freedom, can only be explained by anti-Semitism.
Howard Rotberg, Vancouver
