Letter to the Editor: Richard Sherman

J Street Awarded Prize to President Jimmy Carter (April 21)

Notwithstanding J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami’s acknowledgement
that President Jimmy Carter “may have ruffled feathers in the Jewish community,” Carter did far worse than that.

Carter has categorically declared Israel to be an “apartheid state,” a vicious anti-Semitic slur that flies in the face of reality and places Carter in bed with the most virulent anti-Semites of our time. Not only is the CEO of the largest bank in Israel, Bank Leumi, an Arab, Samer Haj Yehia, but in 1997 Nelson Mandela accepted an honorary doctorate from Israel’s Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. No rational person would believe that Nelson Mandela would have ever accepted an honorary doctorate from an apartheid state.

Anyone who declares Israel to be an “apartheid state” is no friend of Israel.

Richard Sherman, Margate, Fla.