Jerusalem Post Letters to the Editor: Chi-Town success

May he have many successful years ahead in his new position.

By LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Letters (photo credit: REUTERS)
Letters
(photo credit: REUTERS)
Chi-Town success
I, together with all my other former Chicagoans living in Israel, want to say how proud I am of Yaakov Katz becoming the new editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post.
May he have many successful years ahead in his new position.
HANNAH SONDHELM Jerusalem
Full love
Regarding the article “Family of murdered Otniel woman to stage protest at UN,” April 18, in listing the surviving family members of Dafna Meir (may God avenge her blood), there was absolutely no need to mention the fact that her youngest two children are adopted.
I’ve seen such citations before – in The Jerusalem Post and other papers. In almost all cases, as here, that info is totally irrelevant to the story.
Furthermore, and in the interest of educating those who need to be enlightened: There are two ways to create a family – biologically and through adoption. The result is the same. The love is the same.
Are adopted children any less sad than biological ones in facing such a tragedy? Do adopted children love their parents any less than biological ones do? Do parents love adopted children less than they do biological ones? Ask the Meir family for the obvious answers. As an adoptive parent, I already know the answers.
May the family have the strength to cope with its tragic loss.
NACHAMA KANNER Rehovot
Judge less
Interesting how a person’s attitude changes when an attack becomes personal.
Now that the leader of the opposition, MK Isaac Herzog, is under investigation he wants to be sure he gets a “fair hearing” before it is decided whether to charge him, “Herzog warns of Kangaroo courts and beheadings in Labor,” April 14.
However as far as the soldier in Hebron was concerned it was perfectly in order to pass judgment and have not one but many kangaroo courts before the matter was fully investigated by the relevant authorities.
My advice to Herzog and all those who passed judgement on that soldier and found him guilty without having been charged to heed the saying “do not judge your fellow man until you are in his place,” and especially do not judge our soldiers’ situations, as they are under enormous pressure protecting us.
After all whether we like it or not we are in a war situation!
EMANUEL FISCHER Jerusalem
Baseless
With regard to “Sanders’s Jewish liaison is outspoken Israel critic,” April 14, public expression, whether written or spoken, is currently replete with accusations of “occupation” of the West Bank by Israel, which allegedly justifies the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement in general and the verbal expressions of disdain by individuals such as Simone Zimmerman and her ilk, in particular.
Those parties support the creation of a “Palestinian state.”
But existing international law does not.
Unfortunately, the Israeli government has contributed to this erroneous stance by failing to set the record straight. Succinctly put, the West Bank, more correctly known as Judea and Samaria, is not an “occupied” territory as legally understood.
Why not? Judea and Samaria belong, and have belonged, to the Jewish people and now the State of Israel since the San Remo peace conference of 1920. Moreover, as correctly noted by Howard Grief in a recently republished monograph, “[a]s a direct result of Article 80 [of the United Nations Charter], the UN cannot transfer these rights [emanating from the Mandate for Palestine] over any part of Palestine, vested as they are in the Jewish people, to any non-Jewish entity, such as the ‘Palestinian Authority.’” Since a trusteeship was never established between October 24, 1945, the date upon which the UN Charter went into effect, and May 14-15, 1948, the date upon which the Mandate expired and the State of Israel was proclaimed, the rights set forth in the Mandate remained in full force and effect and inured to the Jewish People and the State of Israel. Thus, the UN is still bound to uphold those provisions or is prohibited from altering them.
With this understanding now at hand, BDS complaints about an Israeli West Bank “occupation” are baseless and, by virtue of international law, must be rejected outright.
In similar fashion, comments of the same nature by Zimmerman and many others must also be rejected.
Now that truth has come to light, BDS must be called what it really is – outright anti-Semitism!
ARTHUR SAFIR Warminster, Pennsylvania
Pay attention
Offered without a scintilla of supporting evidence, I found Caroline B. Glick’s reference to Ohio Gov. John Kasich as a “demagogue” and Trump’s “slightly dotty uncle,” one at that, notably unworthy of one The Jerusalem Post’s most formidable political analysts (“Obama’ political legacy,” Column One, April 15).
In fact, Kasich had a commendable pro-Israel voting record in his two decades in Congress and has done nothing to blemish that record as a remarkably successful governor.
While I share Ms. Glick’s sense that a Ted Cruz presidency would be a huge gift to Israel from the American electorate, every poll shows him running behind, in some states substantially behind, Hillary Clinton, whose Israel perspective has always been a model of ambiguity.
The same polls show Kasich beating her handily. If the object of the nominating process is to produce a pro-Israel candidate who can win in November and retain the current strongly pro-Israel House and Senate, Governor Kasich certainly merits our attention.
BILL MEHLMAN Efrat
At peace
In “The commemoration of Rehavam Ze’evi,” Think About It, in April 18’s paper, Susan Hattis Rolef says she supports repealing the 2005 commemoration law in view of new allegations of Ze’evi’s alleged moral and criminal misconduct, which were presented in a Channel 2 documentary last week.
She compares the fact that his misconduct was allegedly well known but swept under the carpet by the authorities to that of all those who kept quiet about former president Moshe Katzav’s sexual misconduct before he was elected president.
However Katzav was given the opportunity to defend himself in a court of law.
Whether or not the accusations against Ze’evi are true have no bearing on the commemoration law without a full trial where he has the same opportunity to defend himself, which would be somewhat difficult in view of the fact that he has been dead 15 years. The Ze’evi family is absolutely right.
HEATHER RECHTMAN Tel Aviv
CLARIFICATION
Encountering Peace columnist Gershon Baskin writes that Jan Sokolovsky’s letter to the editor on April 17, “Upside down,” was completely correct.
Sokolovsky caught the editing mistake that appeared in the print version of the April 14 column “The moral high ground and Zionism,” and which was soon corrected in the online version.
The sentence in question was supposed to read: “The rejection of that decision (the UN Partition Plan) by the Palestinians did not remove the legitimacy and moral imperative of that decision – for the Jews and for the Arabs of Palestine.”