MICHAEL LERNER has claimed that the reason he wanted to speak at the huge [Sunday, February 16] anti-war rally is not only to express his opposition to the war, but to attack those in the movement whom he has repeatedly accused of "Israel-bashing."

Of course, he is referring to verbal bashing, not acts of violence against the state of Israel, as if what Israel has been doing to the Palestinians for decades - not under a dictator, but under a series of democratically elected governments - has not earned, at the very minimum, the most harsh of verbal bashings.

Given Israel's history, one cannot be pro-Israel - that is, in support of an exclusivist Jewish state - without being a racist, any more than one could have supported the apartheid system in South Africa (as did Israel) without being a racist. The proof? A Zionist, like Lerner, believes that a Jew, any Jew, including his paratrooper son, has more of a right to live in historic Palestine, than an Arab Palestinian who was born there.

And what kind of a state does Lerner envision for the Palestinians? A demilitarized one living next to, and literally surrounded by, the fourth largest military in the world which includes his son. Better an honest fascist like Sharon than a false peacenik like Lerner. And what can one say to all those who signed that petition supporting his right to speak? They are the living, sad proof of how deeply Zionized the left has become. Most of them, Howard Zinn included, have never uttered a word in defense of the Palestinian cause, and some, like the odious Todd Gitlin, are committed Zionists.