The Six Day War, 40 years later

The Boston Globe

I'VE BEEN an avid reader of your editorial and op-ed pages for almost two decades, but rarely have I found myself more frustrated than Thursday, when you ran two op-ed pieces devoted to the aftermath of the June 1967 Israeli-Arab war.

The common theme of the two pieces is the Israeli occupation. The idea of presenting alternative perspectives is obviously a good one. But the two views you juxtapose both moralize and sentimentalize the conflict and its aftermath.

Sandy Tolan ("Four decades of occupation") provides a selective and undifferentiated narrative of the ills of Israeli occupation of Arab lands, whereas Jerold S. Auerbach ("An unfulfilled promise") describes the as yet incomplete transformation, triggered by the events of June 1967, of Zionism from a secular to a religious movement of settlement.

Tolan juxtaposes Palestinian suffering under the burden of occupation with Israeli regret, in anticipation of having to return the Golan heights to Syria, over losing the trappings of middle class luxuries such as kayaking and wine drinking. This piece does not do justice to the complex political relationship between Israel and its neighbors.

Auerbach suggests that there exists an "unfulfilled promise" for all of the biblical lands to be brought under the sovereignty of a Jewish state, a point of view that brought us Baruch Goldstein, who in 1994 tried to take the Cave of Machpela by mowing down unarmed Muslim worshipers.

Both pieces are mere rants; one from the left, the other from the religious right.

MICHAEL ZANK
Boston
The writer is an associate professor of religion at Boston University.

THANK YOU for publishing Sandy Tolan's op-ed. As an American Jew and vice chairman of the national grass-roots organization Jewish Voice for Peace, which is founded upon the principles of international human rights, I was pleased to see the Globe give voice to a narrative that understands the complexity and tragedy of the ongoing Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, Golan Heights, and East Jerusalem. The Six Day War was not a victory for anyone; it was the beginning of a nightmare that needs to end.

HOWARD B. LENOW
Wayland

TOLAN WRITES, "Just as the average Israeli's deep psychic need to feel secure could be traced to the Holocaust, so the government's response -- massive retribution on a scale far greater than the provocation -- turned 'never again' to 'again and again.' " He argues that "this strategy, rooted in the horrors of Europe, would instead help ensure the opposite." His formulation is more subtle, but the message is the same as that familiar trope on the anti-Semitic far left and far right: Israel equals Nazi Germany.

The Globe feigns impartiality by pairing Tolan's blame-Israel-for-everything with a second column by Jerold S. Auerbach supportive of Israel. The same logic could be used to publish an article by a Holocaust denier next to one by a Holocaust survivor.