TORTURED CONNECTION

Hermione Lee’s review (Book Review, April 2) of Nadine Gordimer’s writings on South Africa closely examines the encounter between literature and censorship. Gordimer’s creed, says Lee, rests on two absolutes: “Racism is evil,” and “Art is on the side of the oppressed.” Incredibly, Lee draws a tortured connection between such evils as apartheid, Stalinism, anti-Semitism and something she calls “The militaristic variation of Zionism.”

Clearly, Lee knows nothing at all about Zionism or she would never have included it in her catalogue of 20th-Century horrors. It hardly breaks new ground in intellectual perversity to join, as Lee does, Zionism, the Jewish nationalist movement that evolved out of widespread anti-Semitism, and anti-Semitism. However, one would hope that a reviewer of Lee’s stature would not want to perpetuate such a flagrant abuse of the historical record.

JERRY SHAPIRO

ASSISTANT DIRECTOR

ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE

OF B’NAI B’RITH