March 12: Purim spiels?

I would really like 'The Jerusalem Post' to print an article explaining why the Joint (Arab) List’s Haneen Zoabi is not considered an enemy of the state and placed in jail.

Letters (photo credit: REUTERS)
Letters
(photo credit: REUTERS)
Purim spiels?
I would really like The Jerusalem Post to print an article explaining why the Joint (Arab) List’s Haneen Zoabi is not considered an enemy of the state and placed in jail (“Zoabi says she may endorse Herzog for prime minister,” March 10).
Also, please explain why Yisrael Beytenu’s Avigdor Liberman is considered a racist because he wants the people living in Israel to actually be loyal (“Liberman on ‘disloyal’ Arab citizens: Off with their heads,” March 10).
Reading the paper, it seems like it’s still Purim.
SUSAN KATZ
Efrat
Bravo, Bibi
Publishing “The effects of a strong speech” (Comment & Features, March 10) by Ophir Falk, and “The aftermath of Netanyahu’s congressional tour de force” (Candidly Speaking, March 10) by Isi Leibler, shows that you display vision and prophecy for our beloved country.
Falk put Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to the US Congress in the category of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, “which set the stage for ending slavery,” and John F. Kennedy’s famous inauguration speech, in which he said: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

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I certainly agree with Falk’s opinion that “Netanyahu’s speech will justifiably be included in the orators’ hall of fame alongside the monumental speeches,” and hope it will have the same positive effects.
Leibler mentions that “Netanyahu has exceeded all expectations” with his “tour de force depicting the threat to his country and the free world should the Iranian terrorist entity become a nuclear power.”
Bravo to Netanyahu, who is trying to prevent the nuclear catastrophe hovering over the free world right now!
JENNY WEIL
Jerusalem
One vote gotten out
In “Get out and vote!” (Borderline Views, March 10), David Newman makes a good case.
I have never needed persuading.
I simply think about the suffragette movement and how women had to die before men would allow them to vote. I proudly vote, in honor of the memory of Emily Davison and those women who devoted their lives to forcing their governments to finally grant women a privilege that men took for granted.
Perhaps we need to revive the spirit of the suffragettes in order to claim other rights that we women still have not achieved, such as the right to read the Torah at the Western Wall, to stand for election in the party of our choice or to enjoy equal pay!
ELLIE MORRIS
Aseret
Out of bounds
In connection with the, frankly, nasty letters by American readers Barry Cutler and Burton Richter (“US Jews speak out,” March 10), I would like to make the following comments.
Mr. Cutler, who describes himself as a former supporter of Israel, goes so low as to call our brilliant and courageous prime minister a “pompous ass.” I wonder how he would feel if a letter from an Israeli in an American newspaper contained such a vulgar comment about his own leader. I am utterly disgusted and angry that an American Jew could be so full of hatred and arrogance toward Israel.
I would like to remind Mr. Cutler that, unlike the Jews of Israel – natives of this land from 2000 BCE – it is he and Mr. Richter who are illegal settlers in a country where the native tribes have been treated abominably by European settlers who not only violently ejected them from their ancestral lands, but massacred them and forced the survivors into barren refugee camps, where many languish to this day.
No doubt, Cutler’s and Richter’s forebears came from whoknows- where in Europe, just like other settlers, none of whom had the God-given right to settle the American continent – unlike the Jews to whom God gave the deed to the Land of Israel.
TRUDY GEFEN
Kiryat Ono
The Jerusalem Post presented two examples of a faulty argument in letters headlined “US Jews speak out.”
The letter from reader Barry Cutler was an ad hominem attack on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while the letter from Burton Richter was an appeal to false authority. (His having received a Nobel Prize in Physics for contributing to the discovery of the Psi meson is unrelated to expertise in foreign affairs.) Neither of these letters addressed the issues or contributed to the discussion regarding the pending agreement between the P5+1 and Iran.
DONALD B. RICH DIANA BARSHAW RICH
Haifa Y
ou wasted almost a whole column of your precious Jerusalem Post letters section on the letter from reader Burton Richter, perhaps just because he won a Nobel Prize.
Richter seems to be more concerned about “being accused of being an anti-Semite” than he is about Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech in Congress. He should have added: “Some of my best friends are Jews.”
ROCHELLE GREENWOOD
Ra’anana
Certainly everyone is entitled to his or her opinion. However, it’s the job of the Letters Editor to ensure that letters published have at least a modicum of decency. I believe the letter from reader Barry Cutler left the realm of dignity and good taste when he referred to the prime minister of Israel by using language that was beneath all definitions of proper and legitimate usage.
We all have issues with our leaders. Let’s articulate them with a sense of respectability.
STUART PILICHOWSKI
Mevaseret Zion
The Letters Editor responds: These letters were just two sent to The Jerusalem Post by American Jewish readers saying they were offended by the events surrounding the prime minister’s speech to Congress. Some of the other letters were far more discourteous in tone and therefore not used. However, considering the contentiousness of the issue both in Israel and (especially) in the US, it’s my belief that it is important to allow at least some of these sentiments to be heard.
Boosting Abdullah
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s assertion (“PM calls his past support for two-state solution ‘irrelevant’” (March 9) may be some comfort for those on the right of the political spectrum.
But isn’t it true that the prime minister recently stated that he supports the status quo on the Temple Mount? This would certainly be a boost for Jordan’s King Abdullah. Isn’t the king responsible for having presented the resolution for Palestinian statehood at the United Nations?
SIMCHA RUDMAN
Jerusalem
Why the critique?
The sinking of the Struma was officially commemorated for the first time this year in Turkey.
The fact that this was severely criticized in your March 7 editorial (“Turkish hypocrisy”) is surprising.
It was a humanitarian gesture toward the victims and Turkey’s Jewish community. One of the aims might also have been to assure the country’s Jews that they are first-class citizens.
Your editorial contains historical inaccuracies. It considers Turkey’s role in the disaster to have been prominent while neglecting Nazi Germany’s brutalities and British restrictions on entry to Palestine. It also minimizes the Soviet submarine attack itself.
It also forgot to mention the existence of the unofficial representative of the Jewish Agency, Haim Barlas, in Istanbul during World War II, and Turkish acquiescence in letting thousands of survivors pass through by land or sea en route to Palestine.
Undoubtedly, Turkey could have and should have done more to save those poor souls.
Yet there is no reason to settle scores over its current relations with Israel through such a positive event.
UMUT UZER
Istanbul
The writer is an associate professor of international relations at Istanbul Technical University.