By JERUSALEM POST READERSLetters(photo credit: Avi Katz)Send letters by e-mail to: jrep@jreport.co.il. Please include your full postal address. The editor reserves the right to edit letters as appropriate. Priority will be given to brief letters that relate to articles in the magazine.Defensible BordersFraming policy around the need for “defensible borders” seems oddly anachronistic today after the two “great wars” that followed the War of Independence (“Needed: A US-Israel Defense Treaty,” August 1). The Six Day War ended with an astounding victory even though it was fought from what are touted today as “indefensible borders,” while the Yom Kippur War was fought from eminently “defensible borders,” but led to a debacle from which Israel managed to extricate itself only at enormous cost.In addition, the long-range rockets and supersonic warplanes of modern warfare make even eminently defensible borders in the local geo-political reality look ridiculous. Today, any war, from defensible or indefensible borders, will be disastrous for Israel – and for its neighbors.Security, to the extent that it is attainable, depends on a peace agreement that serves the survival and basic rights of both the Israelis and Palestinians. Ignoring the obvious for political or ideological reasons is a betrayal of the duty of leadership.No’am SeligmanRamat GanThe First Direction of PrayerWriting about the status of Jerusalem in Islam, Danny Rubenstein claims in “Redefining Fundamentalism” (August 1) that “Muslims pray in the direction of the Al- Aqsa mosque, the third most important mosque in Islam after Mecca and Medina.”Of course, the qibla, or Muslim direction of prayer, is toward Mecca and consequently, Muslim’s only pray in the direction of the Al- Aqsa mosque when it happens to be in that same direction.
Gilead IniCAMERACommittee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in AmericaBostonDanny Rubenstein responds: Al-Aqsa and Jerusalem was the first direction of prayer determined by Muhammad. He subsequently changed it to Mecca.God in OdessaAs much as I have long admired Matt Nesvisky’s witty style, I suggest he didn’t quite get it straight in his review of the book about Odessa, “Death of a City” (August 1). He correctly cites the Yiddish saying, “Er lebt vi Gott in Odess” (He [or one] lives like God in Odessa), but contrasts that with Odessa as a fiery secular center, burning like the fires of hell.What he misses is that the latter is related to the former. The reason God has it so easy in Odessa is because He has no constituency there, what with its gangsters, traders and swindlers, to say nothing of its unbelievers!Harold TicktinShaker Heights, OhioJudea and SamariaThe area to which the media repetitively refers as the West Bank has been called Judea and Samaria for over 3,000 years. The West Bank was a political term coined after Judea and Samaria was liberated by Israel in 1967 during the Six Day War.The term West Bank is used in order to delegitimize Israel’s historic claim to this heartland of Jewish history. Judea and Samaria has had Jews living in it longer than France has had French or Egypt has had Arabs. The cultural, historic and religious claim is far greater than any that the long list of invaders and occupiers can manufacture.Expelling Israelis from Judea and Samaria would leave Israel only nine miles wide and vulnerable to invasion by the surrounding Arab/Muslim armies. The devious purpose of removing Israel from Judea and Samaria, which is being proposed at the UN, is not to create a 22nd Arab/Muslim country, but its goal is to exterminate the only Jewish state.Douglas MillerFranklin, Michigan
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