Given the response (River Reporter, July 2-7) to my letter in the River Reporter (June 25-July 1), I feel it has to be repeated: Belief in the American credo that all people are created equal makes one an advocate for Jewish rights, a friend of Jewish people and an enemy of antisemitism. 

To continue calling people who hold such beliefs antisemites and Jew-haters reveals an impulse to poison civic discourse and distract from the issues we face.

What are the implications of this principle of equality that make it so difficult for some to face? Yes, it means Muslim and Christian Palestinians should have the same rights as Jewish Israelis, the same right to self-defense, self-determination and equal access to justice. But it also implies that no one group can hold itself apart as superior to all others. This leads to trouble.

People tend to be proud of their own group, and rightly so. Believing in our identity and heritage is natural and our right. But something different is at play when we enter the world of masses of people and multitudes of groups, in which we desperately need mechanisms for getting along. I think liberal democracies were correct in devising a system where everyone has one vote, where everyone has access to justice, and where no one is above the law, even if those principles have often been poorly executed. This is the system that maintains the peace.

Such societies, where the rights of all are respected, have been beneficial to Jewish people, and it should be important for Jewish people to help maintain that system.

The alternative, of officially designating one race or religion privileged over all others, leads to a different set of outcomes: war, strife and massive human rights violations. We’ve seen it in Nazi Germany, the American imperial project, apartheid South Africa, French Algeria—and, though some people don’t want to hear it, Israel fits squarely into this category. It is the system of racial domination that can't last. The people of Israel will eventually have to make peace with the people they've dominated, on fair and equal terms. Repression will never defeat resistance.

How do we get to that, given the non-stop horror show we currently are forced to live through? It can be done through discourse, right in this country, if enough people find it’s better to soft land our runaway empire as an alternative to tipping the whole mess into oblivion. It should begin with a recognition that these crimes are real. Israeli leaders are on media every day making clear their desire to depopulate Gaza, the West Bank, southern Lebanon. The extermination of the population of Gaza has to stop. Wars of expansion aren’t leading to peace. Better solutions are possible.

Doug Rogers lives in Long Eddy, NY.