By LETTERS TO THE EDITORLetters(photo credit: REUTERS)God bless HaleyWhat a signal US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley gave the world when she went to the Western Wall (“Netanyahu, Haley discuss UNIFIL mandate vs Hezbollah,” June 8)! It signifies that America realizes how utterly idiotic it is for the Palestinians to try to divorce Jerusalem from not only Jewish history, but world history.Only people who have no knowledge of the world could proposed that Jews can be separated from their history and spirituality in Jerusalem. The fact that other nations voted with them shows the cowardice and falsehood the United Nations stands for.God bless Nikki Haley. She is to be praised for her courage and her sincerity.BATYA KOENIGSBERGJerusalemRule over PalestiniansJessica Montell (“Continued rule over the Palestinians endangers Israel’s future,” Comment & Features, June 7) is indeed right when she states that an “Israeli presence in those lands comes at a very high price.” Part of that high price is the need to read the numerous distortions she presents in her article.First of all, 98% of Arabs in Judea and Samaria live under the tender mercies of the Palestinian Authority, so who are the “millions of people who are not part of the democracy”? The ones under the PA! And who is responsible for the misery in the Gaza Strip? Its rulers, not Israel. And who is the sap that helps its sworn enemies and even provides free electricity to them? The great thing about those on the Left is that they never let little things like facts get in the way of their arguments.YISRAEL GUTTMANJerusalemJessica Montell contends that the greatest danger to Israel is not Iran obtaining nuclear weapons or Hezbollah’s over 100,000 increasingly sophisticated missiles pointed at Israel, but rather “Israel’s continued rule over the Palestinians.”While Israel remains intertwined with the Palestinian Arabs (chiefly on account of continuing terrorism), since January 1997, 98% of Palestinian Arabs have been living under Arab regimes in Judea and Samaria and the Gaza Strip. They live with their own legislatures, police forces, municipal services, school systems and youth camps – illiberal, corrupt, bellicose and hate-filled as they are. Israel’s writ no longer runs in their societies. By no stretch of the imagination can Israel be said to be occupying them.Jews residing in the biblical heartland of Judea and Samaria possess a fundamental legitimacy and pose no genuine obstacle to peace – were only the Palestinians willing to conclude a peace agreement. If 1.5 million Arabs can live in Israel, hundreds of thousands of Jews can live in a genuinely peaceful Palestinian state – if only the Palestinians were interested in establishing one.The true obstacles to peace are the Palestinian Arab refusal to accept Israel as a Jewish state; their horrifying, Nazi-like Jew-hatred; their demand for a Jew-free Palestinian state; Palestinian insistence on the so-called right of return, which would destroy Israel; their paying Arabs to murder Jews; and their continued promotion of the murder and maiming of Jews in every aspect of Palestinian culture.MORTON A. KLEINNew YorkThe writer is national president of the Zionist Organization of America.Jessica Montell could not be more right when she states that young Palestinian Arabs are frustrated, and our young Jewish soldiers and police are morally traumatized.However, these arguments have been proffered before ad nauseam, and they tell only one side of the story.What Ms. Montell does not say is that the frustration of the young Arabs should be directed not toward the Israelis, but toward their own leaders who are perpetuating military rule by their intransigence. She ignores the fact they have been autonomous for years.She does not mention the hatred spewed by school textbooks.She does not mention the imams in mosques and their literal translation of the Koran, which deems “infidels” and those who leave the Muslim faith worthy only of death by decapitation.She fails to point out that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas refuses to recognize Israel as a Jewish state and for years has avoided any negotiations.Finally, she conveniently forgets that two offers giving them almost everything they wanted to form a state of their own were rejected.Do Ms. Montell and others in her camp not realize our soldiers and police would much rather be entertaining their girlfriends, boyfriends, husbands, wives and children than trying to control rampaging Arabs or preventing jihadist attacks on innocents? When are these Arabs going to come down hard on their Muslim extremists and instigators instead of continually laying the blame on Israel? When will they understand that the land we are willing to give for peace belongs to the Jewish people under international law (see the Mandate for Palestine); that the Arab leaders want nothing less than the demise of Israel and will settle for nothing less; and that their apartheid Shari’a law is no longer directed only at Israel, but is spreading throughout the West and aims at world domination? It’s time to change the acronym for Ms. Montell’s Diaspora-Israel partnership from SISO to SISAM: Save Israel, Stop the Arab Muslims.EDMUND JONAHRishon LezionWe, too, seek peaceNimrod Goren (“Trump and a tale of three cities,” Observations, June 2) exhibits the erroneous thinking that is all too commonly found on the Left.In discussing the “peace process,” he alludes to those promoting it as “pro-peace activists.”What he implies in employing this phraseology is that those against the “peace process” are anti-peace or, at the very least, not ardent seekers of peace. I find this wearisome and insulting.Let it be said once again that those of us on the Right who are opposed to that “peace process” long every bit as much for peace as left-wing individuals. It is simply that we are convinced this process will most certainly not bring peace. Quite the opposite, with its demand for Israeli concessions to a terrorist entity.We await the time when a durable and honest peace can be achieved. It will not happen without a strong Israel.ARLENE KUSHNERJerusalemSmoke those adsIn recent issues of The Jerusalem Post, there have been full-page ads from Phillip Morris Ltd.The increase in smoking in Israel is the result of companies like Phillip Morris, which are only worried about their own pockets, and not the health of smokers and of non-smokers breathing in second-hand smoke. There are many non-smokers, myself included, who will stop buying the Post if ads for “smoke-free tobacco products” are continued.Phillip Morris should pay the healthcare bills of people who become ill because they use its products, including victims of second-hand smoke – the increase in children with health problems such as learning disabilities, asthma and other lung diseases is caused by second- hand smoke.Please stop allowing ads for any tobacco products, smokefree or not!SHOSHANA BEN-ZE’EVJerusalem Doing our part My father, who was blind, regretted bitterly that he couldn’t serve in World War II. He did his part with monthly donations of blood to the Red Cross.Everyone can do something to help his or her country, no matter how small. I despise the young persons who try to evade army and other forms of service.They deserve no respect and no rights, such as subsidized mortgages.REIDA ISSEROFFKfar Yona
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