Letters to the Editor

Diplomats deserve to be heard

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To the editor:

My father likes to say that “when diplomats do their job effectively, soldiers don’t die.”

It’s an oversimplification, to be sure, but one that recognizes the importance of dialogue.

This being the case, what a pleasure it was to have The Riverdale Y host one of the most consequential diplomats in the world, Ambassador Danny Danon, Israel’s permanent representative to the United Nations, this past Sunday.

Ambassador Danon has the most difficult job of any diplomat in the world. The state of Israel faces endless harassment at the United Nations, a circumstance that results from a variety of factors, not the least of which is the need of undemocratic Arab states to use Israel as a foil against which they can channel internal discontent.

This fact is, of course, an open secret. The same Arab permanent representatives to the United Nations that routinely refuse to speak with, and even denounce, Ambassador Danon in public settings enjoy cordial relations with the ambassador and his wife in private settings.

But that’s the dance of diplomacy, and to be expected despite the attendant hypocrisy.

What’s not to be expected is for the ambassador and other public figures who seek to expand dialogue to be silenced by the American people. This has been an especially common occurrence on university campuses where free speech and open dialogue are all too often checked at the front gate.

It happened to Ambassador Danon at Columbia University earlier this year. Yet the ivy towers of academia are a long way from the leafy confines and tight-night community of North Riverdale, a fact that might have given the ambassador good reason to give up a Sunday evening to talk to the American people about Israel and its role in the world.

Unfortunately, that dialogue wasn’t possible because of a single agitator who, just minutes into the ambassador’s question-and-answer session, decided to end the conversation by spouting a stream of invectives so vile that the ambassador was forced to cut short his visit to Riverdale.

The tragedy here, of course, is not that this particular dissented held strong personal views against the ambassador — there’s plenty of space in democratic dialogue for that to be the case. But rather that instead of stating his fiery opposition and then ending it with a question, he chose not to stop. And when the ambassador tried to respond, this person simply shouted him down.

To be clear, the silencers are not the American people. Rather, they are a tiny subset of the American political left that define themselves in opposition to the Israeli government.

But in a dialogue between a foreign official and a group of Americans, it’s not unreasonable to think that each individual present is in some measure representing the American people. When those individuals ask tough and challenging questions, they express the public-minded and democratic spirit of values that America holds dear.

When they deliver ad hominem attacks that curtail speech and deny the back and forth of opposing views, they present the American people a intolerant and close-minded. 

Most tragically, this lone hot-headed questioner silenced not only a distinguished guest of the American people, he also silenced a hundred other Americans in the room who I’m sure would have liked to contribute their own voices to the dialogue with Ambassador Danon.

JEFFREY L. OTTO

The Riverdale Y, Jeffrey L. Otto,

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