Hatred Aimed at Jews: Look Behind the Curtain

While the anti-Semitic garbage spewing from the Arabic world is disheartening (Aug. 31), it’s worth noting that these sentiments spring from nations whose people live under dictatorships, which foster such hatreds to distract from their own abuses. Such tactics are hardly new; anti-Semitism flourished in czarist and Stalinist Russia and, of course, in Nazi Germany for the same reasons.

The answer is democracy, and the U.S. alone is powerful enough to foster democracy in the region. But as long as our government speaks democracy while cozying up to dictators, as long as it preaches freedom but props up corrupt regimes like those in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as long as its leaders value access to cheap Arab oil more than the basic human rights of the Arabic people--so long will we endure such mindless vilification of innocent people and the terrorism and death that go with it.

Paul Gulino

Santa Monica