Ronen Berelovich
Israel
Luke Tryl
President of Oxford Union
Oxford University, UK
Dear Luke,
In spite of our differences, it was a pleasure to talk to you on the phone today, 23-10-07. Thank you for your openness and honesty. I am now following up with a letter to register my official complaint about the decision you took to remove Professor Norman Finkelstein from the “One state is the only solution for Israel” debate that was to be hold in 23\10\07 at Oxford Union. I am registering my complaint as a private individual living in Israel i am a film-maker and a reserve soldier in the Israeli Army. There are a few points that arose in our conversation, which I believe would be of wider interest than just to the two of us, so I’d like to highlight them and to share this letter with Professor Finkelstein and anyone else interested.
To reiterate our conversation, you told me that the reason for the removal of Professor Finkelstein from the debate was the intervention of certain interest parties and people pressuring Oxford Union. You identified Alan Dershowitz as one of those people and you said that he had personally demanded that Professor Finkelstein should be removed from the debate. The reason being that with Finkelstein on the “two-state” side, the debate would be too “anti Israel” and “not balanced”.