Letters 370.
(photo credit: REUTERS/Handout )
Papered over?
Sir, – Gil Troy (“Stop calling American critics – including Hagel
– ‘anti- Israel,’” Center Field, February 20) poses an interesting question as
to what determines the difference between a critic and an opponent.
The
Hagel case is an example of the latter. It should be obvious from the acid tone
and, indeed, vulgar nature of Hagel’s past hostile pronouncements that he is
emotionally antagonistic to Israel.
The fact that US President Barack
Obama selected him belies the president’s statements of concern for Israel and
the Iranian threat, and should be very worrisome to anyone not taken in by
clever rationalizations designed to paper over the obvious.
DAVID KATCOFF
Jericho, Vermont
Gray caucus Sir, – Regarding MK Nitzan Horowitz and “Knesset to
establish ‘gay caucus’” (News in Brief, February 20), when will there be an MK
who sets up a “gray caucus” to look out for the rights of a rapidly aging
population? While there is an admittedly excellent case for demanding affordable
housing for young couples, where is the equivalent caucus that will agitate for
affordable sheltered housing and hospice care? The new handicap-access law is a
start. However, it does not address the problems of insecurity, both physical
and financial, faced by many pensioners.
In fact, many elderly are
already on a “hunger strike” as they just cannot afford adequate nutrition in
addition to prescriptions, spectacles, dental care and a host of other
demands.
YEHUDIT COLLINS Jerusalem
Our obligations Sir, – With regard to
Ben Levitas’s article “Why Jews need to stand up against the oppression of
Christians” (Comment & Features,” February 19), we have our own
problems.
We must combat anti- Semitism, which for the past 2,000 years
was initiated and carried out in an extreme manner by the Christians
themselves.
Then too, we need to consider the behavior of many of those
Christians living in Muslim countries, especially their leadership.
It
isn’t just their being “muted and restrained.”
Far from it. The
leadership of the Palestinian Christians in the West Bank actually slap the face
of Israel. They go out of their way to heap abuse at the one and only country in
which Christians are growing and flourishing.
JOE FRANKL Savyon
Sir, –
Ben Levitas is right when he says that the “Christian response has been muted
and restrained.” In Scotland, warnings such as those highlighted by Civitas are
often ignored, if not dismissed, by the Church of Scotland (CoS).
Not
long ago, a Scottish Christian woman wrote to the CoS of her concerns not only
over the Islamic threat to Christians in the Middle East, but the anti- Semitism
endemic in parts of the Church. The response from the moderator of the General
Assembly of the CoS, the Right Rev. Albert Bogle, was to evade the basic
questions and label her concerns as “deeply offensive” and
“Islamophobia.”
Presumably, Rev. Bogle would find the concerns of Levitas
to be the same.
STANLEY GROSSMAN Glasgow
The writer is a member of
Scottish Friends of Israel
EDITOR’S NOTE An analysis published in
The Jerusalem
Post (“Al- Qaida’s increasing presence in Lebanon: Reality or Syrian/Iranian
propaganda?” January 30, Page 3) erroneously identified the website Al-Monitor
as being “connected with pro-Hezbollah and pro- Assad circles.” Al-Monitor, an
independent US media company that publishes diverse perspectives from the Middle
East, was not given the opportunity for comment prior to the publication. It
rejects these “absurd” allegations.
The Post also disassociates itself from the
opinions expressed about Al-Monitor in the article.