Letters

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By JERUSALEM POST READERS
Letters to the editor (photo credit: JPOST STAFF)
Letters to the editor
(photo credit: JPOST STAFF)
Only a selection of letters can be published. Priority goes to those that are brief and topical. Letters may be edited, and must bear the name and address of the writer.
An uplifting read Sir, – I wish to thank and express my sincere gratitude and appreciation to Stewart Weiss for his moving and inspiring In Plain Language columns.
“The miracle you never knew” (April 18) was appropriate to the season (as are all his columns), expounding and revealing to readers, like a spring bud opening out into a flower, the miracles of our daily lives. It was emotionally, spiritually and intellectually uplifting to read!
HELENA BEN YONA Mitzpe Michmanim
Unusual source
Sir, – Thank you to Seth J. Frantzman for clearly summarizing in “Taking Truman to the woodshed” (Books, April 18) yet another history book that has been published where the main message is that the Arabs were victims of Zionism.
It is through an unusual source that we can get a glimpse of a historical reality that is rarely published today. The official PLO magazine Al Thura from March 1976 has the following: “The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians...but instead they abandoned them, forced them to emigrate... imposed upon them a political and ideological blockade and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews lived in Europe.”
The author of these insights was Mahmoud Abbas, today president of the Palestinian Authority.
LYNETTE ORDMAN Netanya
Cause and effect
Sir, – Lawrence Rifkin would have us believe that Israel’s decision not to release the final tranche of convicted terrorists caused the demise of the moribund peace negotiations (“Undone deal,” Grumpy Old Man, April 11). Israel’s decision was a reaction to, not the cause of, the failure in negotiations.
There was a tacit understanding that the release of Palestinian terrorists would proceed to completion only if there was actual progress in the talks.
Otherwise, all 104 prisoners could have been released at the beginning of the renewed negotiations nine months ago.
This is similar to the series of transaction and waiting periods to gauge whether the other side could be trusted, that Rifkin describes as taking place in the days of the Oslo Accords.
Prior to the scheduled final prisoner release, PA President Mahmoud Abbas repeated his adamant refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. He vowed never to abandon the Palestinian demand for a “right of return” for millions of Palestinian “refugees.” Finally, he refused to commit to an “end of conflict,” under which a peace deal would represent the termination of any further Palestinian claims against Israel.
Abbas’s statements demonstrated that any peace agreement would be only a temporary pause until the Palestinians once again sought Israel’s destruction.
The only question is: Why would Israel even consider releasing yet more prisoners in order to extend the talks under these circumstances?
EFRAIM A. COHEN Zichron Ya’acov
Missed opportunity
Sir, – I would like to thank and commend Nathan Lopes Cardozo for his eloquent “Spinoza’s ‘sub specie aeternitatis,’ yeshiva students and the army” (Opinion, April 11).
I especially appreciated his pertinent comments in the last two paragraphs of the article, which I believe should be translated into Hebrew and widely circulated in the haredi press. What still amazes me is the fact that there are members of the haredi community who despise, berate, insult and attack soldiers in uniform when “the world-renowned, haredi halachic authority Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach,” when asked “to which graves of the tzaddikim one should go to pray,” said “go to the military cemeteries.”
It truly was a missed opportunity, as the writer points out, that the organizers of the mass haredi demonstration in Jerusalem several weeks ago did not arrange for the estimated 600,000 participants exploit the golden opportunity to recite prayers for the welfare of soldiers. It not only would have been a great sanctification of God’s name, it would have healed much of the animosity between the haredi and non-haredi communities.
SEYMOUR HOFFMAN Rehovot