Also Meant to Say This

Theodore Bikel, responding to a friend who dismissed his outrage over the Jerusalem Day "Parade":

Your immediate reaction was as I feared it would be. Finding excuses and justification for a mob scene that, in any other context, would merit instant condemnation and opprobrium. To characterize the shouts of ‘Death to Arabs', whether in the past or now, as ‘rageful response to Arab excesses' cannot be read as anything but indifference. You did not see ‘stones thrown or weapons used' and that somehow makes the scene a peaceful protest? No matter that it was in the middle of the night in a civilian area inhabited mostly by Arab Israeli citizens, entitled to no less protection from hooligans than Jewish ones?

Read it all here.