Middle East and Conrad

I was offended and devastated by Conrad’s latest destructive anti-Israeli cartoon demonstrating our U.S. government held hostage by a militaristic, Nazi-style Israel. True, Kirkpatrick’s article, per usual, clear and insightful, describing Israel’s unjustly untenable, unstable and insecure position in the Middle East, appeared directly below Conrad’s cartoon.

Kirkpatrick’s incisive perception that democratic Israel has been surrounded and outnumbered by Arab enemies bent on its destruction since its inception, that it returned the Sinai to Egypt to insure peace and that it cost Israel three wars to secure this tiny land’s survival are bitter truths.

Nonetheless, it is another bitter truth, in this instance, that pictures speak louder than words. The issues involved are not merely torturous but life and death matters for Israelis and Jews around the world. They date back to the Holocaust, way back to the 15th Century Spanish Inquisition and all the atrocities in all the countries in all the years between. Considering this, Conrad’s cartoons are sickening, totally insensitive and portray virulently vicious anti-Semitism.

DORIS S. MANN

Burbank