Salving Erdogan...
Sir, – Ray Hanania is being disingenuous when he blithely claims that “Turkey asked Israel to apologize for its role in what should have been little more than a political public relations stunt to protest against Israel’s naval blockade of the Gaza Strip” (“The blame game,” Yalla Peace, September 14).
If it were only a matter of salving Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan’s fragile ego and Islamic obsession with humiliation, honor, dignity, majesty and greatness, we Israelis would have found a way to express remorse. Unfortunately, it is not merely an apology he desires – he also insists on the lifting of the blockade.
Yielding to this demand would be suicidal for Israel. That Hanania blithely ignores this makes one wonder if he has finally gotten off the fence and planted himself firmly in the enemy camp.
J.J. GROSS
Jerusalem
Sir, – It is inane for Ray Hanania to claim that all Israel has to do to assuage Turkish wrath is apologize.
Turkey has been shifting its allegiance from the West to the Muslim
world steadily over the past few years. One would have to be either very
naive or deliberately obtuse to think that an apology would make a
difference. I do not think Hanania is naive.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s refusal to apologize for an action
that was perfectly justified and which Israel would do again in the same
circumstances is the proper course, and one that certainly has the
backing of the vast majority of Israelis. A false apology would merely
indicate to Turkey and everyone else that Israel is a doormat on which
all and sundry can wipe their feet.
STEPHEN S. COHEN
Ma’aleh Adumim
...and taking vacation
Sir, – I was shocked to read “Israeli tourism to Turkey up 60%” (Business in Brief, September 12).
This, at a time when Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan daily
spews forth anti-Israel insults and even war-like threats.
Where is our national pride? Apart from the personal danger in visiting a
country where anti-Israel feelings currently run very high, it is an
act of gross disloyalty. There are other vacation destinations that are
cheap and where we are still welcome.
This is a time when we need to stand together and not allow ourselves to
be demeaned by the likes of Turkey, which has turned from ally to
enemy.
DVORA WAYSMAN
Jerusalem
Post-Derfner boredom
Sir, – Larry Derfner’s blog words remain unconscionable, and I realize that had he remained at
The Jerusalem Post his
journalism would probably have led to escalating hostility and still
more heat and less light. No one would have listened to him at all – not
that it seems many of your readers ever did.
But the
Post has become so
absolutely and utterly boring without him. Every time I read another
particularly savage right-wing diatribe, I think: Such and such is okay
in, for example, wanting Israel’s permanent conquest and takeover of
another land and another people – but virtually the only dissident and
voice of conscience gets fired.
Without Derfner, the
Post is already becoming the Likud’s Izvestia and Pravda rolled into one. There is not even a hint of the fresh air of glasnost.
Editor in chief Steve Linde and, before him, David Horovitz both said
they hoped no one could tell what the politics of this paper were. With
very great respect for each, who are they kidding? This is a right-wing
paper, and without Derfner it is becoming implacably and monotonously
far-right-wing.
It’s rapidly losing my interest and, I would assume, the interest of many other pro-Israel liberals.
One can see how few even bother to write in, realizing the implacability of the Likud stranglehold.
JAMES ADLER
Cambridge, Massachusetts