I’m surprised that a rabbi in America hasn’t read or at least heard of George Orwell’s Animal Farm.
By LETTERS TO THE EDITORLetters(photo credit: REUTERS)Obstacles to peace Ilan Manor and Marcus Holmes (“Online Palestine is advocating peace,” Comment & Features, August 1) display a surprising gullibility regarding Palestinian propaganda tactics.They describe the PLO’s “Palestine in Hebrew” Facebook page as “an important shift in Palestinian policy” because it “rarely publishes posts denouncing Israeli policies, the Israeli occupation or the Israeli security forces.” They assert that this might “signal a desire to create a positive and empathetic image of Palestine among Israelis, and to signal a sincere desire for dialogue....”The obstacle to peace is not Israeli unwillingness to communicate with Palestinians. Rather, it is the PLO’s and the Palestinian Authority’s unwavering refusal to prepare the people for peaceful coexistence with their Jewish neighbors.“Palestine in Hebrew,” aimed solely at the Israeli public, is entirely consistent with other duplicitous practices of PA President Mahmoud Abbas and his cohorts. While they speak of reconciliation and good-faith negotiations to their English-speaking audiences, they lionize terrorists and incite their people to further violence in Arabic. The Palestinian leadership will demonstrate a true change in policy and honest desire for peace when it makes exactly the same conciliatory statements in all languages.Manor and Holmes also echo classic Palestinian obfuscation when they refer repeatedly to the “current cycle of violence, which has been linked to the Israeli government’s decision to post metal detectors outside the Temple Mount’s entrance....” In truth, there is no “cycle of violence.” The recent upheaval sprang from the murder of two Israeli police officers guarding the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif. It intensified when Israeli efforts to prevent a repeat of such brutality were met with violent demonstrations and the monstrous slaughter of an innocent Jewish family.The authors’ silence regarding the origins of the recent savagery is disingenuous, to say the least.ARYEH SHAPUNOWSkokie, IllinoisAlive and wellLarry Derfner may no longer be writing for The Jerusalem Post, but he is certainly alive and well in the form of Jeff Barak, a former editor in chief of the Post and former colleague of Derfner’s (“Height of hypocrisy, Reality Check, July 31).Barak refers to Derfner’s book No Country for Jewish Liberals, in which Derfner accuses Israel of claiming the moral high ground in its conflict with the “Palestinians” and the wider Arab world despite often behaving in a far from moral way itself. One can only take from this – even with all that we have suffered at the hands of the so-called Palestinians – that we have not surrendered enough to their demands for our country and our very existence.According to Barak, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was wrong in his public embrace of the guard at Israel’s embassy in Jordan who killed a Jordanian who had attacked him, as well as a bystander who unfortunately was in the vicinity. He says Netanyahu would not have taken it well if the situation had been reversed. This is nonsense and irrelevant, as we don’t glorify anyone who kills even in self-defense – unlike the Arabs, who glorify anyone who kills Jews no matter what the reason.I do admit that the whole charade of the welcome and so-called rescue from Jordan was stage managed by Netanyahu to enable him to take credit. That’s because of the public’s disgust at his latest and most humiliating surrender at the Temple Mount to rioting Muslims who threatened that they would not return to “their” holy site. What a lovely time it would have been to take them at their word and throw them out – I can just see Barak and Derfner foaming at the mouth! Enough already with our support for our enemies. Just admit it: They are our enemies and no matter how much you want it not to be, they want to terminate our existence and take over our land.Perhaps left-wingers – and the Post has no shortage of them – think they will get preferential treatment if the Arabs take over. That’s what the kapos in Germany thought. Enough said.YENTEL JACOBSNetanya Wrong address Regarding reader Gustavo Madrigal’s letter of July 31 (“Objections to photo”), where does the remark “peaceful coexistence” come from? I ask that he write this to the parties that constantly perpetrate these evil deeds, not the ones that print the gruesome photos!S. GELGORTel AvivChief RabbinateThe arguments employed by Rabbi Menachem Levine (“Making the case for the Chief Rabbinate,” Comment & Features, July 30) could be put up as a textbook example of circular logic.Rabbi Levine basically is saying that the case for the Chief Rabbinate is established by the fact that it alone can determine whether the decisions of rabbis are valid according its own completely arbitrary decrees.He basically says this in as many words: “Why do [Jews] come to me, out of all the rabbis in the phone book” to perform weddings, divorces and conversions? They do so because the Chief Rabbinate will recognize his actions as being in accordance with its rules.I’m surprised that a rabbi in America hasn’t read or at least heard of George Orwell’s Animal Farm.If he did, he would recognize that the Chief Rabbinate in Israel is the same as the pigs ruling the rest of the farm animals, and that he’s just one of the horses, described as having “great difficulty in thinking anything out for themselves, but having once accepted the pigs as their teachers, they absorbed everything that they were told, and passed it on to the other animals by simple arguments.”HENRY KAYEAshkelonSo the head honchos at the Jewish National Fund consider those little blue and white pushkes to be their personal bank (“Jewish National Fund execs to repay more than $700,000 in loans from organization,” August 1). How enlightening! CEO Russell Robinson and CFO Mitchel Rosenzweig needed cash to purchase private real estate, so they got the organization – which they run – to loan them $525,000 in Robinson’s case, and $185,000 in Rosenzweig’s case.Where was their chief legal adviser? Wouldn’t this person know that under New York State law, loans by charities to their officers are illegal? Does the JNF even have a chief legal adviser? If it does, maybe this person should be replaced with someone a little more well-versed in the vagaries of state laws. (I do not suggest it consider Israeli lawyer David Shimron, who’s in a bit of hot water over some organizational hanky-panky of his own.) According to the JNF, Robinson and Rosenzweig have been paying back the loans in what you report to be “regular installments.” Hooray! Regular installments! Just like the rest of us! But wait: They were charged interest at the prime rate, “the rate banks offer well-qualified borrowers.” How unlike the rest of us.The “bank” in question was those pushkes. I had no idea those little tin boxes are able to discern between well-qualified borrowers like Robinson and Rosenzweig, and less-qualified borrowers like you and me. Will wonders never cease!ARI BEN-SENDERJerusalem
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