November 16: The kosher seas

Over 1,500 clients per year =opt for the kosher luxury package offered on board complete with a beautiful Shabbat atmosphere, daily minyans, Jewish heritage tours and much more.

By LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Letters (photo credit: REUTERS)
Letters
(photo credit: REUTERS)
The kosher seas
I was very surprised to read the last paragraph in Mark Feldman’s “Sailing the Seven Seas” (The Travel Adviser, November 15), in which he writes about the lack of kosher food options on cruises.
Eddie’s Kosher Travel has been offering a fully Mehadrin kosher gourmet cuisine luxury package for the past 20 years for travelers around the world. We offer at least 10 different cruises a year, mostly on the major cruise lines mentioned in the column: NCL, HAL, Costa and Royal Caribbean. Our destinations include Alaska, the Caribbean, the Canary Islands, the Panama Canal, the western Mediterranean, the Baltic Sea and the Norwegian fjords.
Together with our partners at Kosherica, we attract over 1,500 clients per year who opt for the kosher luxury package offered on board complete with a beautiful Shabbat atmosphere, daily minyans, Jewish heritage tours and much more.
DAVID WALLES, Hashmonaim The writer is vice president and business manager of Eddie’s Kosher Travel.
Proper terminology
In “EU hypocrisy” (Editorial, November 13), you write: “The Europeans are similarly lenient regarding goods produced in...Indian-controlled Kashmir....”
Prior to independence, all of what is now India, Pakistan and Bangladesh was India. According to the partition agreement, the princely states could secede to either India or Pakistan. The terms were that either the maharajah decide or the people decide.
The maharajah of Kashmir, a Hindu, decided to become a part of India. Unfortunately, the majority of the population, which came from central Asia and settled in Kashmir – a bountiful and beautiful land compared to the lands they came from – drove out local Hindus through religious intolerance.
Note, too, that the northwestern part of Kashmir, as shown on world maps, is considered “occupied Kashmir,” while the rest is shown, unlike what you write, as part of India.
I believe that this error could do grave damage to the warming of relations and strong, friendly ties between Israel and the only country in the world that permitted Jews to live free of anti-Semitism for more than 2,000 years.
NISSIM MOSES, Petah Tikva The writer is president of the India Jewish Heritage Center in Herzliya.
The guilty party
Yair Lapid is wrong (“Lapid accuses haredi parties of political extortion over conscription,” November 12). They are no more guilty and, indeed, considerably less so than Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
No one forced Bibi to climb into bed with the haredi parties. He did so gladly, with his eyes wide open and his hand in the taxpayer’s pocket. Indeed, he even announced his intentions prior to the election.
Had he instead announced that he would under no circumstances form a government with anti-Zionist parties, which represent a huge underclass of households headed by hyper-reproductive but economically non-productive males, our state would be well on its way to a two-party system.
Having thrown down the gauntlet, Netanyahu’s counterpart in Labor would have been in no position to form a coalition with the haredim. That would have been political suicide. Instead, new elections would have been called. The voter would then have understood – and I include the haredi voter – that a ballot for a marginal party is a waste.
This would have been a bloodless revolution for Israel. We would have ended up with a majority government that could actually function unimpeded for its full term, to the benefit of all citizens and our standing in the world.
J.J .GROSS, Jerusalem
What they want
Gershon Baskin’s “Netanyahu, tell us what you really think!” (Encountering Peace, November 12) has nothing to do with peace, and everything to do with the psychotic, genocidal blood libels and blood lust by Israel’s enemies.
There are demands of “land for peace” because Israel was attacked in 1948 and 1967 and was victorious.
The Arabs don’t want another Arab state. They want the destruction of the sole Jewish state. If anyone thinks they merely want a state in the West Bank, why wasn’t one created for them there between 1948 and 1967? Could you imagine Germany and Japan, after attacking the Allies and after being defeated by them in World War II, making territorial demands for Hawaii, Okinawa, Poland and the Sudetenland? It would be the height of insanity.
The libels of “occupation” and “oppression” are also pathological delusions. The proof is that people don’t run to oppressive regimes; note the Sudanese and Eritreans who run to Israel. People run away from oppressive regimes, as the Syrian people do, and as Christian people in Muslim-dominated countries do.
IRA NOSENCHUK, Jerusalem
Poisonous recipes
How appalling it was to read the poisonous recipes in “Golden delights” in the November 12 Weekend supplement. They included excessive amounts of sugars and high-fat ingredients such as butter and heavy cream.
Not a healthy recommendation for our increasingly obese population!
AURI SPIGELMAN, Jerusalem The writer is a retired vascular surgeon.
Letters about a letter
Learning the language and integrating, which reader Daphne Coleman calls for (“No need for anger,” Letters, November 12), is not always possible.
Many olim come at retirement age to be with family. Many do go to ulpan, but let’s not kid ourselves – to follow the news in Hebrew takes a great deal of intensive study.
If I remember correctly, the information leaflets I received when planning aliya recommended that we shouldn’t try to put ourselves in a totally “Israeli” area, but settle among other olim who could show us the ropes, so to speak.
LINDA SILVERSTONE, Herzliya Pituah
Reader Daphne Coleman is right in that we immigrants should learn Hebrew and integrate – which I’d also suggest to the Jewish journalists and photographers of the international press corps, who are unduly influenced by the flawed English-language coverage of Al Jazeera, CNN, BBC, France 2, etc.
It is common sense – not “anger” – to insist that our national media present our reality to a mostly hostile world audience in English, as our sworn enemies spread vicious lies about us in many languages, which demands refutation and truth-telling.
ESTER ZEITLIN, Jerusalem
We are not just talking about Israelis. There is a need to counter the insidious lies of most of the world’s English-language media, which broadcast to a vast English-speaking milieu that cannot speak Hebrew.
In The Jerusalem Post, we have had editorials, more than a full page of readers’ letters, articles by eminent people and pleas from lawmakers for a more positive attitude toward a comprehensive English news service. The powers that be, whoever they are, have made no attempt to explain their obscure reasons for truncating a service that can only be described as being of major importance in the world of public diplomacy.
Regarding the headline you gave Ms. Coleman’s letter, I am intensely angry, and I am sure many others are also.
LESLIE GREENBAUM, Pardess Hanna
CLARIFICATION Former defense minister Moshe Arens denies that he gave his approval to “running a spy [Jonathan Pollard] in the heart of the US intelligence community,” as was stated in “The last spy” (Intelligence File, November 13) by Yossi Melman.
CORRECTION Eliezer Shmueli served as director- general of the Education Ministry, and not as education minister, as was erroneously stated in a quotation noted in “A pinnacle of accomplishment” (Education, November 13).