Last straw
Sir, – The word “Jewier” is the last straw for me, even if it was in
quotes (“US rabbis tweak readings to make them ‘Jewier,’” January
29).
For years I have cringed at “different to” and “different than,” and
at numerous other bastardizations of my mother tongue. Now I think we are all
going to end up in the tower.
No, not the Tower of London – the Tower of
Babel.
LEON BENNETT
Ramat Poleg
Raise the covers
Sir, – Kudos to the Post
for raising public awareness about child abuse in the Jewish community (“NGO
decries ‘cover-up culture’ in sex abuse cases,” January 29).
Every Jewish
community must create child protective services like Magen, working with all
religious leaders and professionals.
Prosecution and sentencing for
failing to report must be severe and exoteric for perpetrators, enablers and
accessories. The pharisaic act is not in the reporting, but in the
silence.
Press about Jewish cases must be in the context of cover-ups in
the secular community. Out of context, the press can appear anti-Semitic for
picking on the Jewish community, and this encourages wrongful but inevitable
cover-ups.
In England, Rabbi Padwa allegedly ordered the victim not to
report the crime to civil authorities. Yet executives, producers and cast
members at the BBC knew of television personality Jimmy Savile’s decades-long
molestation of children and never reported it. They were transferred or retired
with golden parachutes after the story broke.
They have not been arrested
or charged in the conspiracy of silence.
Israel, by the way, has an
unsavory international reputation for protecting accused abusers who fled from
other countries, rather than extraditing them.
HAROLD GOLDMEIER
Beit
Shemesh
The writer is a member of the Magen board and former executive director
of the Massachusetts Committee for Children and Youth Strange alliance
Sir, –
The recent alliance of the Board of Deputies of British Jews with the blatantly
anti-Israel Oxfam, and its virtually unanimous support by almost the entire
British Jewish establishment, as well as by the government in the person of the
British ambassador to Israel, symbolizes much more than the liberal Jewish
tendency to bend over backward to help others (“Anglo-Jewish leaders partner
with Oxfam,” Candidly Speaking, January 29).
This and other recent
liberal Jewish trends worldwide, including open hostility to many Israeli
government policies, clearly indicate an end of the axiom of automatic
admiration, sympathy and legitimacy of the State of Israel in the eyes of
Diaspora Jewry.
The most obvious reason for this is demographic, with the
rapid demise of the generation that knew the horrors of the Holocaust and what
it meant not having a sovereign state. In many ways, this generation clearly
viewed helping to ensure Israel’s existence and prosperity as an obligation for
every Jew.
Despite receiving the Jewish “gene” for liberalism and concern
for others from this generation, their children and grandchildren were not
imbibed with their inbred sympathy for, and emotional attachment to, the
already-existing state.
Israel itself became overly dependent on this
attachment, and has basically neglected the growing trend toward the more
troubling directions we see today. It is time our leaders and even citizens
undergo a radical change in thinking and begin dealing with a very new and
worrisome reality in which the State of Israel no longer is one of world Jewry’s
top priorities.
GERSHON HARRIS
Hatzor Haglilit
Sir, – There was a strange
harmony, or possibly one should say dissonance, between Isi Leibler’s column
“Anglo-Jewish leaders partner with Oxfam” and the article on the back page of
the same issue, with its apologia for the enormously influential figure in
modern anti-Semitism (“Taming Wagner,” Arts & Entertainment).
On the
one hand you have Jews trying to support Oxfam, which is notorious for
anti-Israel propaganda that has spilled over into anti-Semitism. On the other,
you have the usual bien pensant Jews who feel they must show how liberal and
cultured they are by advocating public performances of Wagner.
Our
Supreme Court has set the correct tone by its decision that Wagner not be played
on public radio, and that Wagner lovers be content with supporting local record
shops and buying discs should they so wish. That is their affair, but it is our
affair if they wish to spend taxpayers’ money or give the man any official
sanction.
This is of significance now because the musical world will
certainly celebrate the 200th anniversary of Wagner’s birth in May. This is a
party we cannot attend.
LOUIS GARB
Jerusalem
By any definition
Sir, – How
can Attorney-General Yehuda Weinstein permit the government to approve the
Prawer Report on the relocation of Negev Beduin to end, as Prime Minister
Binyamin Netanyahu said during the most recent cabinet meeting, “the spread of
illegal building by Negev Beduin” (“Gov’t to address disputed Beduin lands in
Negev,” January 28)? After all, it is clearly a transition government by all
definitions.
And yet, as early as October 2012 Weinstein ruled that the
government could not consider the adoption of the Levy Report on construction in
Judea and Samaria, an equally critical issue, on the grounds that it was a
transition government – which at the time it was not. Elections had simply been
announced, but the government had not fallen.
Hopefully, the Supreme
Court will invalidate this ill-considered government decision. But Weinstein’s
analysis will carry much weight. I respectfully look forward to learning his
definition of a transition government so that it applies to the facts of the
Levy Report, but not to those of the Prawer Report, and to seeing if the Israeli
public will accept it.
JAN SOKOLOVSKY
Jerusalem
Bit of a stretch
Sir, – I
read with interest the article written by Sarah Honig regarding “anti-Semitism”
in Cahersiveen, a torn in County Kerry, Ireland (“That unwitting indecency,”
Another Tack, January 25).
I know the town, I know the school and I know
teachers in the school, and unfortunately the events as stated by Honig are a
total distortion.
Even if they were accurate, though, to extend this to
claims of “anti-Semitism” is shoddy journalism in the extreme. Would an Israeli
teenager saying that we, the Irish, all support the IRA be evidence of
anti-Irish feeling in Israel?
JOHN DOYLE
Cork, Ireland
Caspit’s Bibi problem
Sir, – As a subscriber to The Jerusalem Post I enjoy reading articles with
viewpoints that are not my own. The same cannot be said for “The perfect
Israeli” by Ben Caspit (Observations, January 25).
Caspit generally
relishes attacking and vilifying Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and I find
his columns sensationalist, superficial and just plain distasteful. In “The
perfect Israeli,” while yet again bashing the prime minister, Caspit treats us
to this gem: “Netanyahu will always do the worst possible thing at the worst
possible time. And when he finally reaches a dead end that forces him to do the
right thing, then it’s either too late or at a price that’s too high.”
I
would like to ask Caspit how Can-do-no right Netanyahu continues to fool
millions of Israeli voters? The prime minister not only served an almost full
term, he emerged from the recent elections as the frontrunner to form the next
government, and his party received almost as many seats as the next two parties
combined.
KENNY FISHER
Jerusalem
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