Sense of longevity

Reading “Reflections on 9/11 – 5,840 days later” (September 11) gives me more reflection of the longevity of this horrific act. It was a day of infamy equal to Pearl Harbor.

By LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Letters (photo credit: REUTERS)
Letters
(photo credit: REUTERS)
Sense of longevity
Reading “Reflections on 9/11 – 5,840 days later” (September 11) gives me more reflection of the longevity of this horrific act. It was a day of infamy equal to Pearl Harbor. Being a bad mathematician, I do not want to calculate how many days ago Pearl Harbor happened – in doing so, I will be saddened even more.
LOIS EISENBERG Valencia, California
Going beyond diapers
Your September 11 news item “10% of all garbage in Jerusalem? It’s diapers,” which says that 40-45% of the city’s trash that is sent to the Greennet plant is recycled, looks good for domestic waste. But no hi-tech solution is in place to recycle construction, demolition and excavation waste from the NIS 1.4 billion “Jerusalem Gateway” project efficiently, cost-effectively and profitably! However, forward-looking clients of ours in various parts of Israel have identified the need and opportunity and are on their way to turn such trash into cash.
I invite Jerusalem’s City Hall to contact me to bring the city up to speed.
JACK SHEBSON Jerusalem
The writer is director of Eurotrade Recycling Limited, exclusive partners in Israel of CDE Global UK, which has supplied such plants to 60 countries.
Bad policy
With regard to “Haredi, secular clash in Arad” (September 11), maybe the worst thing Benjamin Netanyahu has ever done as prime minister is stand behind the current government’s whopping handout to the ultra-Orthodox community.
Never mind that these generous subsidies encourage the recipients to stay out of the labor force, counteracting all the efforts to make them contributing members of society. Forget the fact that all this taxpayer money isn’t available where it is desperately needed – to support the disabled, for instance.
Now we see another consequence of a bad policy that could have been predicted – all this money funds ultra-Orthodox takeovers of secular communities, deepening the divisions between sectors in our society.
NAOMI SANDLER Jerusalem
Come home, Elias
With regard to “A Jewish ‘Dreamer’ is scared, but refuses to despair” (Comment & Features, September 10), I feel for Elias Rosenfeld. I feel sorry – for him as well as his dear mother – that this young man lost his mother at such a young age, and also feel his unease at finding out that he is basically an illegal alien in the United States.
But I have a solution for him.
There is a country that will welcome him with waiting arms and grant him citizenship. This country has excellent universities where he can get as good an education as he is getting at Brandeis – and without worrying about BDS and pro-Palestinian anti-Israel/antisemites who might hound him.
Elias, come home to Israel and be part of the start-up nation that is changing the world. (As my wife so aptly has said, “When you live in Israel, you get a front-row seat to history.”) You sound like a wonderful kid. There is plenty of work to be done here among your own people.
NORMAN DEROVAN Ma’aleh Adumim
Our true heroes
While Amnon Reshef is definitely one of the true heroes of the Yom Kippur War (“Tackling the peace gridlock with caution,” Frontlines, September 8), in most cases, the level of political ignorance and naiveté of too-opinionated former generals and security personnel who would bend over backwards to accommodate Arafat and his henchmen is inversely proportionate to their military rank.
These people have generally had their ignorant pride blind them to the real needs of our country. In fact, the military prowess of the IDF and our nation has come from the will and strength of the rank and file, and relatively less from their skill.
While some of our generals have been truly brave as well as brilliant at times, most of our true heroes were mid-ranking officers, ordinary recruits or reservists.
YAACOV TAUBE Kfar Etzion
Good and bad
In “Immigrants – good and bad” (Middle Israel, September 8), Amotz Asa-El ignores the fact that there are two kinds of immigrants to the United States. There are those who entered the country with the permission of the government to become citizens, and there are those who infiltrated into the country by various means and remained there illegally.
President Trump and his administration have no objection to immigrants. They do have a problem with infiltrators.
Mr. Asa-El’s statement that immigrants “made that country what it is” is correct, but infiltrators did not. That distinction is important. There are a significant number of infiltrators who are criminals or undesirables, proportionally more than among legal immigrants.
The problem of infiltration has grown in recent years, primarily as a result of the difficulty in receiving permission to enter the United States as a potential citizen.
The DACA decree, an executive order of then-president Barack Obama in November 2014, gave immunity from deportation to those who were infiltrated by their parents when the parents illegally entered the United States, and granted them amnesty from deportation. It seems to have been based on the principle of not punishing the offspring for the sins of their parents. This is a very moral principle.
However, Obama was quoted in a Fox News piece when he issued his decree as stating three years previous to his order that a president does not have the authority to override laws passed by Congress and ratified by a sitting president.
Bearing in mind that Obama was a constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004, it can be presumed that he knew what he was saying in 2011, and he thus knew in 2014 that his decree was unconstitutional.
If the above-stated principle is to be invoked, it will require legislation to do it, and that is exactly what President Trump has requested of Congress. President Obama asked the same thing, and Congress deliberately chose not to enact such legislation, leading to the unconstitutional executive order rescinded by President Trump instead of trying to defend its status in court.
HAIM SHALOM SNYDER Petah Tikva
New prescription
Jessica Montell’s “Ending punitive demolitions” (Observations, September 8) makes the case for ending the demolition of terrorists’ homes by referring to a military committee’s 2005 findings saying the practice’s deterrent value was wanting. Yet she selectively ignores the sources cited in reporter Adam Rasgon’s “A closer look at West Bank home demolitions” (Frontlines, September 1).
In it, Post columnist Lior Ackerman, a former Shin Bet counter- terrorism expert, is cited as saying that “demolitions absolutely deter” and are “highly effective.” Ackerman also says he believes parents who understand their homes could be demolished are more likely to take action to prevent an attack or notify the authorities.
Rasgon further corroborates Ackerman’s perspective, obliquely referring to the May 2014 Hebrew University/Northwestern University “Counter-Suicide-Terrorism” study, which found that suicide terror attacks had decreased after there was an increase in home demolitions.
If Montell really wants to avoid demolitions, here is my prescription: A convicted terrorist – and his family, if they had prior knowledge and failed to act – should be sentenced to building the victim’s family a new home, preferably in a community such as Efrat or Ariel. That could be the best deterrent of all.
JEFF DAUBE Jerusalem
The writer is director of the Israel office of the Zionist Organization of America.