Mr. Obama will leave office with the issue of race in upheaval. He should be remembered for forsaking a chance to be a healer and uniter. This is a disgrace given what might have been.
By LETTERS TO THE EDITORLetters(photo credit: REUTERS)Obama no help With regard to “Lone gunman in Dallas ambush was army veteran” (July 10), the Dallas shootings prove once again the tragic failure of President Barack Obama’s outreach to blacks during his tenure.Not only are police now targets – which is vile and unprecedented – but the races have not been this divided since Brown v The Board of Education of Topeka, the landmark 1954 Supreme Court ruling that said separate public schools for blacks and whites were unconstitutional.America is on a slippery slope, and the hand in our back pushing us is Mr.Obama’s. His promise to fundamentally change America means undoing 60 years of racial progress. All the statistics defining interaction between the races are much worse than they were seven years ago, and the black community itself is more divided, less employed, less educated and poorer.It was assumed that our first black president, a former community organizer, would have the skills needed to bring the races together and create harmony.Instead, he has been divisive and often one-sided on contentious issues, and has frequently exposed a lack of interest in solutions, as with the racial mayhem and shootings in Baltimore and, worse, Chicago.Mr. Obama will leave office with the issue of race in upheaval. He should be remembered for forsaking a chance to be a healer and uniter. This is a disgrace given what might have been.RICHARD KLITZBERG Princeton, New JerseyNot just the bordersReading all the British expressions in “Brexit revisited” (The Travel Adviser, July 10) might lead one to think that it was written by a Brit, but the phrase “The reason Brexit passed, albeit by only 52% of the voting public was primarily in opposition to the liberal immigration laws promulgated with the EU” shows this to be false.It’s true that many in Britain are worried by the wholesale influx of immigrants and the subsequent threat to their traditional way of life. But, this was, so to speak, just the last straw.For over 40 years, the British way of life has been gradually eroded by ever-intrusive EU laws that have turned what was originally assumed to be a trading bloc into a political monster. There are many examples, but as these are well documented, it’s quite sufficient to say that the majority of Brits wanted to get Britain back under British rule. Having control of your borders, although important, is just one aspect of this.Many in the media seem to imply that the Brexit result, or rather the driving force for it, was racist. While this is rubbish, it’s an unfortunate fact that the vast majority of the media are left-wing, as are many university staff, and what they say carries an unfair influence.They are entitled to their opinion, but then so are the people who voted to return to having Britain ruled from Westminster rather than from Brussels.BOB KNIGHTModi’inWrong reasonGideon Sa’ar (“Build in Jerusalem – Now!” Observations, July 8) is quite right. We must build in Jerusalem, now and forever. But – and this is where he and every other non-offthe- charts right-wing politician goes wrong – building new homes in Jerusalem (and everywhere and anywhere) in the Land of Israel and the State of Israel should not come as a response to enemy terror. It should be done as a right of the people of Israel, and as an obligation of the Zionist government.Proclaiming the right to build only as a response to atrocities actually weakens our claim to sovereignty in our own land. If we only build as a response, we are effectively saying it’s not really our right.And calling on the US presidential candidates to support our right to build in our own land? Who cares what they think! Do we weigh in about zoning laws or similar issues in the US? Is Donald Trump going to ask our permission to build his next casino or golf course? Only when our leaders realize that the only way to truly achieve sovereignty is by freeing ourselves from the shackles of our own Diaspora mentality will we enjoy freedom and self-determination in our land.MOSHE BODNERJerusalemSuccess storyHassidic schools in Quebec ranked higher than neighboring gentile high schools in secular studies, according to the latest annual report by the Fraser Institute, which ranks 461 public, private, francophone and anglophone schools in the area.While this might be an exception to confirm the rule, why can’t haredi schools in Israel and elsewhere imitate their success? Why doesn’t the press cover this success story and use it as a beacon for haredi schools instead of lashing out at them and beating them to the ground? BRUCE MITCHELL Southbridge, Massachusetts The writer has written extensively on Yiddish linguistics and Judeo-Spanish language and literature.Back to Golan Regarding Deputy Chief of Staff Maj.-Gen. Yair Golan, it is hard for me to comprehend that absolutely nobody in the media or academia, or even among your readership, took the general to task and tried to examine and compare Israel to the actual political climate and state of the Jews in Germany in the 1930s.There are so many reliable books on the subject written by, just to name a few, Lucy Dawidowicz, Daniel Goldhagen, William Shirer and former Jerusalem Post columnist our Sara Honig. Compared with Germany in 1930s,there is not even a scratch of resemblance, let alone symptoms. The general is out of step with history.The sad fact is that many Israelis are not far behind. Who is to blame? An open question.Yet it was the general who contributed to Israel’s delegitimization more than any of our detractors or enemies. Even if it was unwittingly, the damage is being done.To add insult to injury, the then-minister of defense praised the general for his “courage” in speaking out.LEON KRYSZEK Lod
if(catID != 151){
var cont = `Take Israel home with the new Jerusalem Post Store
