Israel would not form a coalition to destroy itself

Editor,

I have a suspicion Richard Berthold thought he was making a very clever point when he wrote the following in the Daily Lobo on Oct. 4: "Hamas was not created by Iran, but by Israeli intelligence, which wanted to challenge Yasser Arafat's Fatah."

Perhaps he was attempting to recreate those witty hijinks he so embarrassingly displayed on Sept. 11, 2001, when he told a class full of freshman, "Anyone who can blow up the Pentagon has my vote." Unfortunately, claiming Israel created Hamas is almost as serious a blunder as complimenting terrorists for killing innocent civilians. Berthold's first mistake ultimately cost him his job; his second stripped him of any credibility he had as a commentator on current events.

Any reader with a vague knowledge of the Middle East would find it odd to claim that Israel created an organization whose sworn goal is to destroy the Jewish State. Hamas was neither created by the Mossad nor the Pasdaran. It was founded in 1987 by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin of the Gaza wing of the Muslim Brotherhood at the beginning of the First Intifada. Hamas is best known in the West for its suicide bombings and other attacks directed against Israeli civilians. Its charter calls for the destruction of Israel and its replacement with a Palestinian Islamic state.

Now, let me take a step back from these facts. When I read this claim near the beginning of Berthold's column, I immediately got the impression that this person had no idea of what he was talking about. At that point, the rest of his column was completely meaningless for me, as were any valid points he may have made later in the piece. This is the result of allowing desperate has-beens with failed careers to print rubbish in an academic newspaper. Such outrageous claims are an insult to reader intelligence and - in some cases - remarkably dangerous.

In fact, claiming Israel created Hamas is equivalent to claiming Zionists were actually Nazis and that they somehow staged the Holocaust in order to create sympathy. Where have you heard this rhetoric before?

Oh, that's right - Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Actually, such conspiracy theories that claim Jews manipulate world affairs in their evil interests are not new in the literature of anti-Semitism. My only objection is that Berthold somehow felt he was original in making this claim when I read the same thing on the rabidly anti-Semitic Web site

JewWatch.com several months ago.

I suggest Berthold, who specialized in Hellenistic Greece, refrain from commenting on contemporary Middle East politics to save himself from the embarrassment that so tarnishes his career. Or better yet, submit his conspiracy theories to his local affiliate of the Aryan Nations.

Rachel Fredman

UNM student