LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

By LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Letters (photo credit: REUTERS)
Letters
(photo credit: REUTERS)
Jaffa rampage
How sad that Taylor Force, the US veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, was murdered by a Palestinian terrorist (“US tourist killed, 12 wounded in TA stabbing spree,” March 9).
Vice President Joe Biden missed an important opportunity to pay his respects to this man by visiting his seriously wounded wife in the hospital. This lack of sensitivity adds to our disassociation from him.
MARSHA ROTH-ISAACS Jerusalem
I found your headline very disturbing.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines a spree as a “lively frolic.” Would it not have been more appropriate to call a spade a spade and a rampage a rampage, as you did at least in the article?
ARYEH BODENHEIMER Beersheba
Pew poll
A new Pew poll reports that 48 percent of Israeli Jews favor Arabs being “expelled or transferred from Israel” (“Nearly half of Israeli Jews support transfer or expulsion of Arab Israelis – Pew poll,” March 9). This has aroused an expected furor about the “racist” Israeli Jews.
Our president weighs in (“Rivlin: Pew report presents troubling challenges,” March 9). The Joint List and Amnesty International put their expected two bits in, too.
Did Pew ask the Arabs the same question, substituting “Jews” for “Arabs”? If it had, I would expect the answer to be 99.99% in favor.
If the report was even-handed, why wasn’t this question asked?
JACK BARETTI Jerusalem
Nice to see that 48 percent of Israeli Jews have finally came to realize that you cannot live with an enemy in your midst.
How many more Jews have to be killed or crippled for life before the other 52% realize the danger of the Arabs living in Israel? Yet President Reuven Rivlin calls the idea of transferring Arabs out of Israel “a very dangerous situation.” He adds that it threatens the democratic character of Israel: “You can’t have a democracy just for Jews.”
Would Rivlin choose democracy for everyone, even if it meant doing away with a Jewish State? All we need is more Arabs voting at election time – which they are already doing – and, together with the extreme Left, they will have a majority in the Knesset.
Israel will democratically be renamed “Palestine,” and there goes your Jewish state.
With all our goodwill gestures, giving away parts of our homeland and building towns and roads for the Arabs, there is no peace.
Not only is there no peace, there are daily attacks. Our president either does not know or chooses to ignore that other countries have used transfer to get rid of third columns.
BARBARA GINSBERG Ma’aleh Adumim
Internal wars
In your editorial “The Kotel and a constitution” (March 9), we learn once again, to our great sorrow, of the “Orthodox establishment” being “at war” with Reform and Conservative Jewry.
As a “not at war” Orthodox Jew, I view our teachings as stating clearly that all Israel is responsible for one another (Talmud Shavuot 39a). This, however, does not mean that one section can foist its religious interpretation upon another through any form of coercion. In fact, the Torah informs us that should one wish to admonish a person for a possible transgression, such rebuke should be given out of love, not via hostile threats or in a way that might cause embarrassment (Vayikra 19:17-19).
It was not so long ago in our history that a ban of excommunication was placed upon those radicals who challenged traditional Judaism. Our prime minister cannot, therefore, even entertain the thought of excluding any person, Jews in particular, from praying at what is considered to be the holiest place on Earth.
LEONARD E. BOOK Ashkelon
The writer is a rabbi.
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