Letters to the Magazine 403067

Readers weigh in on previous issues of the 'Magazine.'

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
Envelope (photo credit: ING IMAGE/ASAP)
Envelope
(photo credit: ING IMAGE/ASAP)
Cynical politicization
It’s impossible to explain the total disconnect between the sub-headline in “Home opposition” (Business, May 1), which mentions the “unabashedly Land-of-Israel” Psagot winery, and some of the terminology in the article as anything other than bias and deliberate distortion.
In the first few paragraphs, winery founder Yossi Berg talks with pride about the connection of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel, saying: “The Kingdom of Israel started in the hills around us.” But after that, as the discussion concentrates on the effect of the BDS boycott on the winery in particular, and on goods produced in Judea and Samaria in general, the author completely adopts the language of the boycotters, rather than that of Berg.
Nowhere does Etgar Lefkovits ever mention the location of the winery as being in Binyamin or in Samaria, but always as being in the “West Bank” or the “territories.” In fact, he specifies that its closest neighbor is Ramallah.
Here is the scorecard: “West Bank” appears 11 times; “settlements” 12; “occupied” or “Palestinian territories” four times; and “Green Line” once. It is doubtful that those terms were much in use in the Kingdom of Israel. Contrast this with “Judea and Samaria” once; and “communities” once.
This is more than just bias; it is a misrepresentation of statements by some of those Lefkovits cites, who certainly don’t use such terms. For example, he says about the recently upheld “anti-boycott” law: “Under the law, anyone calling for a boycott against Israel or the settlements can be sued for damages.”
But the law does not use the word “settlements,” and its drafters made certain it did not.
The correct translation of the law is a boycott against Israel, “or an area under its control.”
Such cynical politicization of the great success of the Psagot Winery and the vision of its founder in the face of the boycott campaign by our enemies is inexcusable.
JAN SOKOLOVSKY
Jerusalem
I was astonished to read that some Israeli restaurants do not stock Psagot wines, produced in the West Bank, because these establishments do not wish to offend the sensitivities of their left-wing customers.
Well, this offends my sensitivities.
In the interests of transparency, I ask that all restaurants display a notice that they do not boycott West Bank products. That way, I will know where to eat.
ERNEST WINOCOUR
Rehovot
Your move
“Counting the days” (Judaism, May 1) states that “the solar year represents the complete revolution of the earth round the sun...” Yet a solid scientific case can be made that the opposite is an equally, if not more, valid model.
“The struggle, so violent in the early days of science, between the views of Ptolemy and Copernicus would then be quite meaningless. Either CS [coordinate system] could be used with equal justification.
The two sentences ‘The sun is at rest and the earth moves’ or ‘The sun moves and the earth is at rest’ would simply mean two different conventions concerning two different CS” (Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld).
“We know that the difference between the heliocentric theory and geocentric theory is one of relative motion only, and that difference has no physical significance. If the Galileo Affair had taken place after Einstein had framed his General Theory, it would have resulted in an even draw out of physical and mathematical necessity” (Sir Fred Hoyle).
“Whether the earth rotates once a day from west to east as Copernicus taught, or the heavens revolve once a day from east to west as his predecessors held, the observable phenomena will be exactly the same: A metaphysical assumption has to be made” (Bertrand Russell).
Nowhere in the Hebrew Bible is any diurnal or annual motion attributed to the earth, only its fixity and staticity: “We cannot feel our motion through space; nor has any experiment ever proved that we are actually in motion” (Lincoln Barnett). “It is my firm belief that it is the sun that revolves around the earth, as I have also declared publicly on various occasions and in discussion with professors specializing in this field of science” (Lubavitcher Rebbe).
AMNON GOLDBERG
Safed
Write to: maglet@jpost.com
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