Speaking at an event on Monday organized by the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, Hank Johnson, a congressman from Georgia, likened Jewish residents of the West Bank to termites. After being rebuked rather tepidly by the Anti-Defamation League, he responded via Twitter with something less than an apology, as David Wolpe writes:
This was [Johnson’s] tweet: “Poor choice of words—apologies for offense. Point is settlement activity continues [to] slowly undermine [the] two-state solution.” The ADL [replied] that they “appreciate” his clarification. That would have been far more convincing had the congressman apologized, but he did not. To apologize for “offense” is to say you are sorry that someone else feels the way they do. That is not an apology. “I am sorry I said something stupid and anti-Semitic”—that would have been a fitting apology.
These are not trivial issues. We are a half-century away from millions of human beings who were designated as “vermin” and killed. . . . To call Jews “termites” is base and vile.
You don’t know a good person by the fact that they never say anything objectionable. . . . But good people will be horrified when they realize what they have said. They will not apologize for someone else’s taking offense, but for their own insensitivity and cruelty.
That is what the congressman should have done. That is what he, pointedly, did not do. Draw your own conclusion.
Postscript: Yesterday evening, Wolpe announced that “Hank Johnson reached out to me and offered a full apology for the language, the imagery, and the hurt he caused.” Johnson also sent the ADL a tweet reading “I sincerely apologize for the offensive analogy. Period.”
Read more on Time: http://time.com/4423931/hank-johnson-israel-termite-apology/