EU’s concerns

Why is the EU so concerned with telling Israel how it should make peace with its implacable enemies?

By LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Letters (photo credit: REUTERS)
Letters
(photo credit: REUTERS)
EU’s concerns
Were other readers as bemused as I was over your headline “Mideast peace is one of the EU’s top priorities, Tusk tells Rivlin” (June 22)? We know that “Mideast peace” in this case does not refer to the incredible scope of conflicts roiling the whole Middle East from Libya to Syria and Iraq to Yemen, but only to Israel and the Palestinians.
Why is the EU so concerned with telling Israel how it should make peace with its implacable enemies? Why can’t it first take care of its own very serious problems, such as the discontent signified by the UK’s Brexit vote and all it portends; the economic failure of the Eurozone; the fate of Greece; the millions of Muslim migrants and the breakdown of the Schengen zone for free migration; and so on? Perhaps the headline should have been “EU’s serious problems are one of Israel’s top priorities, Rivlin tells Tusk.”
YA’AKOV BEN MEIR
Netanya
Crazy plan
With regard to “Kahlon signs bill mandating government savings accounts for every child in 2017” (June 22), whereby every Israeli child will get NIS 20,000 as an 18th-birthday gift, it’s a great idea but a crazy plan.
According to Central Bureau of Statistics data for 2014, there were some 2.7 million Israelis aged 17 or below. So the government is planning on setting up 2.7 million accounts, administering them all so that a payment of NIS 82 is made into each account every month (budget NIS 2.65 billion divided by 2.7 million), and making the money available when the child turns 18.
Only those children born this year will actually get NIS 20,000 (that will be a big help in 2035!), while everyone else will get less than those who accrue funds over longer periods of time.
If Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon actually wants people “to begin their adult lives with NIS 20,000 in hand and open new opportunities for themselves,” why not start now, with everyone who turns 18? The CBS figures show that some 130,000 young people are currently of that age – meaning NIS 2.6b.
Let him just give the money to the National Insurance Institute. As each young person registers there, he or she will receive a NIS 20,000 present from the government. We won’t have to spend goodness- knows how much on administering millions of accounts.
BRIAN FRANKENSTEIN
Hod Hasharon
Writing finis
In “Explaining the Israeli Left” (Our World, June 21), Caroline B. Glick seems to grasp only half of the story.
The triumph of the religious Right – the secular Right has already triumphed – will mean that the occupation has been replaced with annexation, and annexation will only come with full citizenship rights for the indigenous Arabs.
The dramatic increase of non-Jews to our population rolls will end the easy, if sometimes uncomfortable, correlation between the demography of the citizens of the state and its Jewish identity. From that point forward, Israel’s Jewish identity will derive from the dynamic relationship between the Jews of Israel and Judaism’s heritage and traditions, rather than the static relationship between the Jews of Israel and their religious pedigree.
Put somewhat differently, the triumph of the religious Right will write finis to the Israeli form of Judaism on the cheap – purchased by some with the blood of others.
Under such circumstances, the secular Left – and more and more of the secular Right – will correctly fear that their Judaism will be no more.
AVI BERKOWITZ
Efrat
Animal kindness
In the heat of summer, do not walk your dog at midday. Do not cycle with your dog running alongside.
Do not talk on your cell phone and forget you are walking your dog.
Do pick up your dog’s mess and keep the sidewalks clean. Do fill throw-away dishes with water and spread them around your area for stray animals to drink.
EDITH LOTZOF
Netanya