By LETTERS TO THE EDITORLetters(photo credit: REUTERS)The Tlaib and Omar non-tripRegarding “Tlaib refuses offer to visit family, citing ‘oppressive conditions’” (August 18), when Israel barred the two congresswomen’s entry, many pundits reacted negatively and said that we should have left them in. I felt that this was a good decision because they would have come with a gaggle of communications people to film all of their provocative actions, probably starting at the airport. All of this material would be splashed online and used against Israel.After this, Rep. Rashida Tlaib sent a letter to Interior Minister Arye Deri asking for a humanitarian waiver and promising to abide by conditions which, apparently, had been agreed upon prior to sending the letter. She probably thought that this request would be rejected and that she could use this as additional proof that we are evil. Because we are a compassionate people, she was given a waiver based upon her letter almost immediately.She then rejected the waiver and stated that blasting Israel was more important that visiting her 90-year-old grandmother. This was followed up by a tweet by her grandmother in English. Hard to believe.Congratulations to our government.SHMUEL SCHWARTZRa’ananaIsrael bans two hate-filled women from entering the country and the Left goes berserk. More than a dozen Muslim countries ban entry to eight million Israelis and the Left remains silent.Hypocrites.STEPHEN VISHNICKTel AvivShame on Israel. As an American Jew with ties to Israel, bar mitzvah trees and who attended school with Jonathan Netanyahu, I am for the first time ashamed. Only leaders who fear the truth work to block the free exchange of ideas. President Donald Trump will be gone some day, but the damage to Israel’s standing and security may take far longer to cleanse.ROBERT B ISARDElkins Park, PAI strongly support our government’s decision to bar those enemies of Israel. As such, I strongly disagree with the wholly negative analyses by your editorial staff, including: “Tlaib and Omar outsmart Israel” by Herb Keinon, “Dem Leaders: Disappointing decision,” by Omri Nahmias and “Why Israel errs in barring congresswomen,” by David Brinn.Surely your analysts could find something positive about this decision? If the government had allowed them to enter Israel, they would only have used their visit for anti-Israel propaganda purposes that would have had long-term consequences. This is the dignified way to go, we have shown them we have sovereignty and we will not allow them to use us as the object of their negativity and derision. This was the right decision.JACK COHENBeershebaRashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar are on record as enthusiastic supporters of Omar Barghouti’s antisemitic genocidal BDS movement. BDS cofounder Barghouti said the sole purpose of BDS is the “euthanasia” of the Zionist dream of Israel. A student of history, Barghouti knows full well that the Nazi T4 Euthanasiav Program was the foundation of the Final Solution of the Jews as enacted in the Wannsee Protocol in January 1942. His use of the word leaves no doubt that BDS aims to continue the antisemitic eliminationist mission formalized by Reinhard Heydrich and Adolf Eichmann at the Wannsee Conference. By embracing this, Tlaib and Omar should be barred from entry. Their only purpose as advocates for BDS is to agitate for the destruction of Israel.RICHARD SHERMANMargate, FloridaReps. Omar and Tlaib support BDS, which has a policy of boycotting Israel, which it feels should not exist and should be replaced by one state of Palestine.The congresswomen should not be surprised that they have been boycotted, facing the same tactics they promote. What is good for the goose is good for the gander. They would fully understand the language of boycotting with the aim of destroying your enemy. They have never fallen short of being enemies to the Jews and Israel.If those that disparage you come knocking at the door, it is not a good idea to open it with wide arms and wait to be hit. Their itinerary had nothing to do with Israel or meeting Israeli officials. The Congresswomen were not interested in the Israeli narrative and would have been there to promote anti-Israel and antisemitic propaganda. They needed to be boycotted.KAREN PISKNetanyaThey can always sneak in through a terror tunnel.LOIS GREENKadimaThe technically legal decision to block US Congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib from entering Israel has the potential for significant negative ramifications. While their hateful antisemitism and support for BDS are contemptible, preventing them from entering Israel will not cause them to temper these positions. If anything, it will give them (and other members of Congress) an excuse to escalate their charges that Israel oppresses its minority Arab citizens and Palestinian neighbors. They will assert that anti-democratic Israel is afraid to allow people to see what is really happening on the ground.Israel has nothing to hide or be ashamed of. Omar and Tlaib would have seen the region’s only democracy in the midst of a no-holds-barred election campaign. They should have been introduced to Arab judges, Knesset members and leaders of institutions of higher education where many Arab students study, along with a broad range of Israeli political leaders. They should have been shown the tunnels through which Hezbollah and Hamas planned to launch attacks against Israeli civilians. Then they should have visited Yad Vashem so that they could learn about real concentration camps – worlds apart from the detention facilities where immigrants illegally crossing the US/Mexico border are held temporarily.Omar and Tlaib would have witnessed an open society where all religions and ethnic groups mingle freely. If they continued falsely accusing Israel of “apartheid” in the face of these facts, they would have conclusively demonstrated their antisemitism. If they refused to participate in a program designed to explain both sides of the complicated story, their closed-mindedness and disrespect for one of the US’s closest allies would be plain for all to see.While Israel had the right to take this action, it has played into our enemies’ hands. The decision is understandable on an emotional level, but we could have shown strength through restraint. When Omar and Tlaib become increasingly strident in criticizing Israel, as no doubt they will, we will be partly to blame.EFRAIM A. COHENZichron YaakovCongresswomen Omar and Tlaib did not plan a good faith, open-minded visit to Israel and to the disputed areas. Their proposed itinerary and extreme anti-Israel stances made it clear that admitting them to Israel would give them additional ammunition with which to attack the country.The Knesset was correct in 2017 to pass a law barring BDS supporters from Israel. These two congresswomen are outspoken BDS proponents. Their Democratic Party membership should not exempt them from this Israeli law if they seek to visit.History teaches us that threatened democracies are vulnerable to being suborned by hostile forces from within. The Weimar Republic is a textbook example. Israel cannot afford to ignore history by admitting these two inimically hostile legislators. Keep them out!DANIEL H. TRIGOBOFF, PH.D.Williamsville, New YorkRamallah achievementNoa Rothman, granddaughter of the late prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, saw fit to meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah (“Noa Rothman’s pathetic embrace of Abbas,” August 16).Notwithstanding the fact that he is a notorious Holocaust denier, a serial refuser to negotiate seriously for peace and responsible for paying rewards/salaries to Arab terrorists who successfully slay Jews, she nevertheless delivered a speech laying the blame at Israel’s door for the lack of peace with our Palestinian neighbors. She surely cannot be oblivious to Palestinian intransigence and the many efforts made by our government to reach a negotiated peace. One can only come to the conclusion, sadly, that here we have a clear example of the enemy of my enemy is my friend.Her only real achievement was to get out of Ramallah alive .DAVID S ADDLEMANMevasseret ZiyyonSunny side downIn “A side of Israel young American Jews are not commonly exposed to” (August 14), Jerusalem Post readers of the were presented with an exceptionally long article by Ethan Felder describing his experiences in and near Hebron.He had already learned the Arab side of the tension, since, as a college student, he had been presented with so-called historical accounts of the Nakba, “the event that turned hundreds of thousands of Palestinians into refugees in 1948.” He also met some of the refugees – or, rather, their grandchildren – waiting to “return” to their claimed homes. I wonder if he also met any of the descendants of the Arabs who murdered their Jewish neighbors on that bloody Shabbat in that same Hebron in 1929. They had also seemed friendly and warm; many were next-door neighbors of the people they slew. They claim sovereignty over our land; so do we.Most of the Jews he met are described in rather negative terms, with the exception of Nadav, a soldier who exposed to him the “immorality of the occupation.” What occupation? As he himself writes, the Arabs living in Jerusalem have chosen not to vote in municipal elections. But they have the right to. They also have many rights they would not have in Arab countries, such as the right to live anywhere they choose, not forced to stay in refugee camps, places where all the world can see and pity them.The Jerusalem Post should not give space to people like Felder who are used by our enemies to blacken our name.RHEA ISRAELRehovot Ethan Felder tries hard to describe the shared pain of the Israel-Palestinian conflict and the failures at peacemaking on both sides, or as he infers, its many complexities that are not understood and rarely reported outside the area. What he neglects to mention is that both the origin of this conflict as well as the reason it persists are due to the refusal of the Palestinian Arab side to confer any legitimacy upon the State of Israel as a state of the Jewish people. In the most simplistic terms, both sides continue to suffer, but the blame lies with them.ARDIE GELDMANEfratJihadi blood bridesRegarding “Jihadi brides and forgotten victims” (August 16), I agree: Damn the Jihadi brides. This the face of Islamists. One can be sure that many Muslims will have nothing but praise for these murderers. Thank you, Liat Collins for the clear article spelling it out.MURRAY GREENFIELDTel AvivWhat’s Left?“The savior of the Left?” (August 16) exposed the still-blind, deaf and dumb Left in the person of Nitzan Horowitz. The Left has been frozen out for one simple reason – they live in cuckoo-land.Horowitz’s uncompromising agenda does not take into account that, according to international law, Judea and Samaria belong to the Jewish people as documented in the Mandate for Palestine. No binding UN resolution has changed that. Therefore, there is no reason to stop building there.The Palestine Authority has no wish to negotiate a “two-state solution,” as they contend that all of Israel is Palestine and is Arab land and will never compromise on that, period. Why should they – for, as long as they do not accept Israel as a Jewish state, money will continue to flow into their hands? They can continue to blame the Jews for their suffering as they continue their pay-to-slay policy.The Left should realize that, when Jordan illegally occupied the ‘West Bank’ and gave it that name, they inundated it with Arabs from different countries who thus became illegal settlers, as Mohammed Abbas is, and are occupying Jewish land. As for Gazans, their charter calls for killing/ throwing all Jews out of this country. Yet the Left keeps banging their heads against a stone wall, begging for a peace that will never come.Save us from the Left. Judea and Samaria are definitely not ‘disputed territories and it’s about time our government claimed our rightful sovereign title to all the land, which does not preclude autonomous regions within it, like Gaza.EDMUND JONAH.Rishon LeZionGeneral retirementAmos Asa-el seems to be searching for a reasonable solution to second careers for our retired generals (“What should retired generals do?” August 9).Maybe Asa-el had the answer in his column title. Just maybe retired generals should... retire.ARTHUR MILLERBeit Shemesh
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