Letter from Robert Garfield

Wriley Nelson Got It Wrong

Just when you thought it was safe, “Hometown Oneonta” has once again inexplicably chosen to sully its pages with the loathsome rants of its antisemite in residence, Wriley Nelson.

I’d actually prefer to ignore his cretinous screed, but truth is, such vituperative hatred must be slapped back whenever it rears its ugly head.

I will again direct my response to Mr. Nelson personally, because Wriley, yes, I know that you’re reading this. So imagine I have just taken an antiemetic, and am looking directly into your warped, hateful eyes.

I call you an antisemite, Wriley, because despite your dissembling attempt to credit Judaism as a “2,500-year-old world faith,” it is plain that you hold loathing and animosity toward the Jewish people, abhor their established right to be a free people in their own land, and wish for them to remain a landless, vulnerable people dependent for their existence on the whims of bigots like you.

I call you an antisemite, Wriley, because your scurrilous charge that “every single member of the United States Congress has a designated handler from AIPAC” is just another version of the vile Jewish conspiracy theories that will never go away. I call you an antisemite, Wriley, because that is exactly what you are.

Robert Garfield
Oneonta