Letters to the Editor: Moral dilemma

There is no obligation or reason for Israel to invite enemies to live within its borders.

By LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Letters (photo credit: REUTERS)
Letters
(photo credit: REUTERS)
Moral dilemma
I fail to see a moral dilemma regarding Israel’s acceptance of Syrian refugees, regardless of the quantity (“The Syrian moral dilemma,” Editor’s Notes, October 7).
Israel is technically at war with Syria, with which it hasn’t signed any treaty. If Israel feels magnanimous toward unfortunate refugees, there are more than a few African asylum seekers who could be considered.
There is no obligation or reason for Israel to invite enemies to live within its borders. Their first address for succor should be the Gulf Arab states, which seem to be singularly uninterested.
STEVE KRAMER
Alfei Menashe
The State of Israel has always shown that, despite the many issues it faces, it has a very big heart for others. Whether a flood or an earthquake, Israelis are among the first to provide urgent assistance in other countries.
I was born in Frankfurt and escaped Germany with my parents through London in 1939.
My cousin escaped to England thanks to the Kindertransport.
On the day following his bar mitzva, he boarded a train, kissed his parents goodbye and never saw them again.
This is a wonderful opportunity to organize an Israeli Kindertransport that would bring a number of children from Syria who face starvation, injury and even death, until they could be returned home. It would require organization, but considering the number of kibbutzim and other residential possibilities, I believe we could save the lives of many!
CHANA SIMCKES
Beit Shemesh
The ‘slam’...
Your front-page sub-headline in “US slams government intentions to build 98 new homes in Shiloh” (October 6) quotes the White House as saying: “Is this how ‘good friends treat one another’?” Why is this a one-way street? The US can treat us like a little child, but when we display any sign of independent thinking, we are scolded by the great father in Washington.
Israel is a sovereign country and we are the only ones who can decide what is good for us. If the US believes that settlements are wrong, then let it clean them up in a very simple way – force the Palestinians to come to the negotiating table and maybe as part of a peace agreement, settlement expansion will cease.
Until such time, it is in our best interest to continue settling our ancestral homeland.
On a similar note, the US should clean up its own settlements, built on ancestral Indian lands. Who is it to give us advice?
NACHUM CHERNOFSKY
Bnei Brak
In my last letter to the editor of The Jerusalem Post (“Readers react to a video and the resulting controversy,” September 13), I discussed the word “seething.” “Slamming” is a good word, too.
I slam a good friend’s refusal to acknowledge my country’s capital, even as he self-importantly pontificates within its borders. I slam our good friend’s falsehoods, certainly his lack of geographical knowledge of our country, when he refers to new housing in Shiloh.
I slam everyone who still refers to cities of 30,000 people as settlements! I slam good friends’ generosity with stringent strings attached. Isn’t that what “good friends are for”? I slam the world’s silence when rockets hit our residential neighborhoods. Perhaps I just can’t hear it with all the noisy UN, European Union and assorted uncivil-rights groups’ condemnations, but then, I’m just the little guy.
Which hard-punching verb will I learn next month? I’d like to learn “praise.” Praise for our democratic judicial system that upheld Palestinian rights to their private lands, causing the uprooting of our Jewish “settlers” and relocating them to a new neighborhood in Shiloh.
I’d like to hear praise for all the first aid we render to the world’s needy. I’d like to see some acknowledgment for all our scientific and medical breakthroughs that we gladly share with the world.
I’d like to hear, even occasionally, the world’s condemnation of the terror we endure daily and condemn the perpetrators, not the victims. I’d like to hear praise of our resilience in the face of overwhelming odds. I’d really like to hear it, but I’m not holding my breath.
We’re the little guys. We need to learn from the big guys, especially the big guys in the White House. After all, what are “good friends” for?
SARA SMITH
Jerusalem
When I read about a harsh condemnation of Israel’s decision to build in a settlement, I initially think it is coming from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan or maybe Turkey. But no, these states show complete disinterest in settlement construction and in the Palestinian conflict in general. They have much bigger problems in the Middle East than a few buildings in Shiloh.
Only our ally, the United States, is concerned.
It seems that the State Department has lost its compass.
Daily, many buildings in Syria are bombed and destroyed – along with their civilian residents – but Secretary of State John Kerry is worried about construction in Judea and Samaria, whose Jewish population grew naturally last year and needs more homes, schools, kindergartens and preschools.
I think that Russian President Vladimir Putin is laughing out loud over this US behavior. He can continue his buildup in Syria as long as Washington is busy counting buildings in the settlements. Putin is teaching the US administration a lesson – who is the sheriff in the Middle East, and who is the joker.
In the entire Obama administration, you do not hear even one voice that says US policy on settlements is outdated.
SHLOMO FELDMANN
Givatayim
US President Barack Obama often speaks of fulfilling the “aspirations of the Palestinian people.” What he does not say is that the aspiration of the Palestinian leadership is to see the Jewish people disappear from all of Israel.
RUTH ZIMBERG
Safed
Why don’t we just build quietly instead of making big announcements that cause all kinds of problems? There’s a saying: “Even a fish wouldn’t get caught if he kept his mouth shut.” Truer words were never spoken.
ANITA ELLIS
Jerusalem
...and the tribute
I must preface this comment by stating that I am appalled and upset about the Obama administration’s baseless condemnation of Israel for building some homes. But I respectfully suggest that Caroline B.
Glick objectively consider yet again the amazing tribute that President Barack Obama unstintingly gave for Shimon Peres on the world stage (“Obama’s hostile eulogy,” Column One, October 6).
This Likud supporter heard only words of eulogy. Moreover, Mr. Obama explicitly affirmed the validity of the Zionist enterprise.
“I think our friendship was rooted in the fact that I could somehow see myself in his story… Shimon’s story, the story of Israel... of a people who, over so many centuries in the wilderness, never gave up on that basic human longing to return home,” he said at Peres’s funeral. The US president also spoke convincingly of gas chambers and the Holocaust to a world that increasingly doubts these truths.
Proverbs 27:21 teaches us: “So is a man to his praise.” The equivalence in both speech and action that Mr. Obama ascribed to Shimon Peres and Nelson Mandela – the only other leader eulogized by the American president – must not be undervalued. It is wrong not to recognize the president for his good deed, even as we vehemently protest other administration pronouncements.
NISAN HERSHKOWITZ
New York