July 28: Temple Mount unrest

Let’s admit that Moshe Dayan was wrong when he turned the Temple Mount over to the Wakf after the Six Day War.

By LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Letters (photo credit: REUTERS)
Letters
(photo credit: REUTERS)
Temple Mount unrest
Enough! Let’s admit that Moshe Dayan was wrong when he turned the Temple Mount over to the Wakf after the Six Day War. (“Tisha Be’av observance shattered by Arab rioting on Temple Mount,” July 27).
Israel bends over backwards to accommodate Muslim worship at their religious sites. But Jews must stand up for their rights. We should be accorded the same courtesies that other religions receive in Jerusalem, and elsewhere in Israel.
In view of this latest disruption on Tisha Be’av, I propose that the Temple Mount be closed to all Muslim worshipers on Jewish holidays. It is time for Israel to recognize the rights of Jews to worship at their religious sites, without disruption by Muslims who do not respect us.
KALMAN FEINBERG
Jerusalem
There must be countless video monitors on the Temple Mount, so it should not be too hard to arrest those responsible for stone-throwing, rioting and aggression. Israel has the capabilities to maintain order there.
However I propose a simple idea. On special days like Tisha Be’av or Rosh Hodesh, the Temple Mount should be easily accessible all day to any who wish to go there – with security checks but without the delay tactics of the current police checkers. When the rioters see that the riots have the opposite effect then things can go back to normal.
FRANK BERGER
Ma’aleh Adumim
No viewers here
So the BBC made a documentary for its Panorama series that is all about the light rail system in our capital (“BBC under fire for documentary on Jerusalem Light Rail,” July 26).
The apparently controversial program suggests that the railway divides the city, further exacerbating the Israel-Palestine issue. However as the HOT cable provider and Yes satellite service no longer screen the BBC, viewers are unable to watch Panorama, so it seems pointless even mentioning the program!
SALLY SHAW Kfar Saba
Jerry Lewis’s comments that the BBC takes less notice of complaints if they have “evidence of lobbying” is totally ridiculous as can be seen by the impact of lobbying by anti-Israel activists (“BBC under fire for documentary on Jerusalem Light Rail,” July 26).
This particular program was watched by 1.7 million people.
Maybe these protests now will stop it being repeated. Sadly, this documentary was certainly not the “worst account of Israel in living memory “as the Israeli Embassy official seemed to think. But it is good news that the Israeli Embassy is at long last taking an interest and protesting against the appalling lies against Israel on the BBC and in the British media.
LYNETTE ORDMAN
Netanya
Focus on the Czechs
Sarah Honig is a jewel in your newspaper. Her clever lip-synching of US President Barack Obama to British prime minister Neville Chamberlain’s 1938 script on Czechoslovakia (“The gospel according to Lapid,” Another Tack, July 24) was wasted under a headline about Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid’s opportunism.
If the Czechs had been led by a Netanyahu, defended by the IDF and grounded in a faith burnished by millennia of struggle, things might have turned out differently, for both them and the world.
ZALMI UNSDORFER
London
Vanishing word
As a child, much as I adored reading and study, my home was almost devoid of books, except for a couple of prayer books together with a health manual kept in a small drawer.
So the local library was my favorite home.
Therefore, how wonderful and refreshing it was a to read Raymond Apple’s “Life for our books – books for our life” (Comment & Features, July 23) on the value of a book collection, something I was so fortunate to slowly acquire later in life – and foolishly donated away.
Sadly, it would seem that as Rabbi Apple realizes, there is less of the printed word around these past few years, which leads many of us to ponder that with this sad reduction, we are witnessing a dreadful lessening in our lives of the ethical values that came in print, and now are so often cast aside.
GLORIA MOUND
Netanya
The bus is coming
When I finished reading Maureen Dowd’s “Hi-ho, Lone Ranger” (Comment & Features, July 23) I was reminded very forcefully of the disastrous destruction of Gush Katif 10 years ago.
Ms. Dowd wrote: “Obama has always radiated the smug air that he was right and any other positions were illogical.
But it is gratifying when aimed at the obnoxious Republicans and the more obnoxious Bibi.”
In this method of debate, just as they did 10 years ago, the first thing to do is to disrespect your opponent.
Because we were certain we would get missiles from Gaza in Ashkelon (nobody dreamed about getting them in Haifa or Petah Tikva), we went out to demonstrate. We were threatened by policemen (on horseback, with truncheons!) not to dare to block the intersection.
Those who did were viciously beaten. Some were arrested and tagged with criminal records that took them years to expunge.
Ms. Dowd went on to write that the Republicans were never going to go for the Iran deal: “Their apocalyptic statements were written in advance and they just had to hit “Send” followed by a fund-raising appeal to Jewish donors.”
My goodness. It’s like saying that all the Irish have a drinking problem.
Look at her last paragraph.
“Obama is gambling that he won’t hurt his party and that in 10 years, Iran will be a better member of the international community. But he can’t do worse as an oracle of the Middle East than the conservative warmongers who ravaged the region.”
Wow! Just like 10 years ago, those of us who opposed a hair-raising, dangerous deal were called “warmongers.” But US President Barack Obama’s gamble is not based on a sure thing. And his chips are our very lives, not his.
Obama and his European pals are getting ready to throw the State of Israel under the bus in favor of Iran. We can see the bus coming. We can almost smell it.
But since we have no intentions of allowing such a thing to happen, we must speak up right now. Otherwise, things are going to get very messy very fast.
THELMA JACOBSON
Petah Tikva
Apology due
Reading Caroline Glick’s “Irony of the Expulsion” and David Weinberg’s “The malice of Gaza disengagement” (July 24) broke my heart.
To think that there were and still are influential people with such hatred even after they have been proven so completely wrong is frightening.
These people should be apologizing every day for the wrong that they perpetrated.
EALLAN HIRSHFELD
Ra’anana
Kerry recruitment
US Secretary of State John Kerry is very keen to recruit some Israelis like Ami Ayalon, Efraim Halevy and American bodies like J Street who share opposite views of the elected government and most of Israeli people, to defend his pact with Iran. It’s ironic that not a single Israeli was involved or asked to attend the long negotiations with Iran.
ISSY HASS
Ra’anana