Sir: On Wednesday night, 5 September, during the panel discussion
following the final episode of Holocaust on BBC 1, Rabbi Hugo Gryn, a survivor of Auschwitz, expressed the fear that a curious variant of Nazism was still around in the attempt to brand the Jews with Nazi characteristics. Imagine my horror therefore when getting the Spectator the following morning to read Christopher Booker's words: 'When the antisem itic mob on Kristallnacht was portrayed shouting 'Jews Out! Out! Out!.. the image which almost inevitably rose to mind was of Mr Begin and a group of today's Israelis shouting 'Palestinians out! Out! Out!' Needless to say Mr Begin and the Israelis have never said anything of the sort.
The Israelis are not racists. They have even made Arabic the second official language of the state. However the Arab countries have been trying to use the Palestinian Arabs to conquer Israel in the same way that the Germans used the Sudeten Germans to conquer Czechoslovakia in 1938, and the Israelis refuse to fall into the same trap.
Mr Booker and thousands like him desperately want to believe that the Israelis are racists. Why? They have never seen a press report of Israelis shouting 'Palestinians out!', but somehow they feel they ought to have done, and end up believing they have actually seen it. Why? Have the subtle seeds planted by the Nazi government's Antisemitische Weltdienst started to sprout after lying dormant for a generation following the Holocaust?
David M. Jacobs 23 Worley Road, St Albans, Herts.
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