By LETTERS TO THE EDITORLetters(photo credit: REUTERS)Just a smokescreen With regard to your front-page photo accompanying “PM: Gaza protesters’ true intent is to destroy Israel” (April 8), which shows black smoke billowing from burning tires in the Gaza Strip near the border fence with Israel, I googled 20 great uses for old tires. The following are just some: playgrounds, community gardens, recycled furniture, wastewater treatment filters, retaining walls and many other things I am certain the Gazans could use with the current state of their economy.Nowhere on this list is the suggestion to burn tires for the purpose of protesting, obscuring terrorists and attempting to breach sovereign borders.If the Syrian regime were to create a toxic smoke cloud over rebel children, you can be sure there would be a great outcry. Where were the left-wing parties, the green parties, the Europeans, the World Health Organization and all the other regular voices against this outrageous environmental terrorism that seriously threatened the whole area?Why is it only the IDF and COGAT that seemed to care about the health of the Gazans? Can it really be that leftist and green organizations are willing to sacrifice Gazans’ lives for their own political agenda because they cannot speak up against any anti-Israel activity? Once again, it is obvious that these groups’ concern for the Gazans is just a smokescreen.JULIE BLOCH MENDELSOHNZichron Ya’acov I do not understand why the Israeli authorities did not bring in one or several of their airplanes for treating forest fires to put out the burning tires along the Gaza fences. This would have put out the fires and also thwarted the strategy of burning items to obscure attacks. In addition, the use of chemically treated water could have had a calming affect on the crowds by disbursing them.Please, Israel and IDF, use your legendary strategic maneuvers to deal with this real and present danger. Live up to your reputations!BETZALEL MESSINGERBeit Shemesh Hamas’s intentions...Your lead headline on April 8 “PM: Gaza protesters’ true intent is to destroy Israel.” If this is true, then there are only two possibilities: Hamas has in fact recognized Israel and declared war, or it is claiming that the Gaza Strip and Israel are one country and it is a civil war.It is also interesting that Britain claimed to be a friend of Israel when Israel took no action against Russia with regard to the recent poisoning in the UK, but is not acting as a friend in the Security Council. When will an Israeli newspaper or politician point out the hypocrisy of Britain and the rest of Europe?MICHAEL H. DAVISRishon Lezion ...and those of some of usEven during Passover, the Jewish people’s festival of freedom, the “religion of peace” dares to raise its ugly head in the Holy Land.Our Hamas-led enemies attack our Gaza border from the land from which we withdrew and handed over to them. They enter Israel to work and sustain their families. They receive water and electricity from Israel.Any normal nation would close off all work, water and electricity. But we are not normal. We are the Jewish nation with the most moral people and army in world history. Yet recently, an Israeli newspaper (not The Jerusalem Post) ran an article calling our soldiers, sons and grandsons the “Israel Massacre Forces.”Akin to the Iran/Hezbollah/Hamas threat from without, a serious threat comes from within: this newspaper, its readers and other Israeli Jews who lack the religion of Judaism. They have adopted the “religion of peace.”This idol is blindly worshiped in all areas of life. The potential destruction of the State of Israel has no effect on these Israelis because their fully-fledged religion takes the murderous hate of our enemies into account.I believe that freedom of the press does not include blasphemy of the Israel Defense Forces, even if it clashes with a newspaper editor’s “religion.”YEHUDA OPPENHEIMJerusalem News for an Australian readerI have news for reader Rajend Naidu of Sydney (“The uproar over Gaza,” Letters, April 8): It is not only Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who makes “claims” about the ethics of Israel’s army. Col. Richard Kemp, who commanded Britain’s forces in Afghanistan and is in possession of detailed, inside information on Israel’s rules of engagement, declared that the IDF is the most moral army in the history of warfare.As for conscientious objectors, of course they exist in Israel. They exist for many and varied reasons, as they do in any democratic country that needs to field a mandatory military service. This includes Australia, when, back in the day, it needed a draft.I am certain that your reader will not find conscientious objectors among the ranks of the civilians, including children, who are forced by brutal Hamas fighters to Israel’s border in their “March of Return.”DAVID SMITHRa’ananaInnovative ideaWith regard to “B’Tselelm’s call for soldiers to refuse to shoot at Gazans raises ire” (April 5), allow me to suggest an innovative idea that will please both the Right and Left: Each B’Tselem pacifist should go the border with the Gaza Strip and change places with an IDF soldier there.Simple! (Oy, but they won’t be able to run away fast enough when their Gazan “friends” start to stab, shoot and invade Israel....)LEAH RUBINSTEINKiryat Ye’arimTelltale photoAm I the only one to notice something very interesting in the background on the left side of the front-page photo accompanying the news item “Liberman rejects calls for investigation into Gaza deaths” (April 2)? A man in a wheelchair is hurriedly being pulled over rough terrain toward the border fence while there is tire smoke and tear gas all around.Now why would those humanitarian and peaceful Gazans be putting someone like that in danger? Just wondering.GERSHON DALINModi’inQuote Hamas’s charter!The assault on Israel’s borders by Hamas has gone into its second week. What this shows is that the world is a strange and weird place.I have not seen in any news article in any mainstream paper that I have read, be it the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, The Economist, The New York Times, The New Yorker, the Telegraph, Le Figaro or even The Jerusalem Post, a single quote from the Hamas charter that would indicate what Hamas and the Palestinians stand for.How about this elephant in the room? Article 13 of the Hamas charter says: “There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through jihad.”So why this silence? If the late Shimon Peres could quote from the Hamas charter at the world economic summit in Davos in 2009, after which Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan stormed out, why doesn’t Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu do so now?MLADEN ANDRIJASEVICBeersheba
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