June 7: True coexistence

When Israeli teachers are integrated into Arab schools "I’ll know that we’re really on our way to coexistence with our neighbors."

By JERUSALEM POST READERS
Letters 370 (photo credit: REUTERS/Handout )
Letters 370
(photo credit: REUTERS/Handout )
True coexistence
Sir, – It was lovely to read today of the plan to have Arab teachers in Israeli schools (“Ministry announces plan to integrate Israeli Arab teachers into Jewish schools,” June 5).
What would be even lovelier, and more significant, would be to have Israeli teachers in Arab schools. When that happens, I’ll know that we’re really on our way to coexistence with our neighbors.
DEENA SPIGELMAN Jerusalem
Hopping around
Sir, – It would behoove the Western Wall rabbi to read the weekly parsha before writing a commentary on it (“Parshat Shelach: We are not grasshoppers!” Observations, May 31).
Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz states: “After receiving qualified approval from God, Moses agrees to the request and sends 12 spies...” Nowhere in this parsha is there any evidence that it was in response to the Israelites or Moses’s request that the spies were dispatched to Canaan. On the contrary, the initiative is God’s alone (Numbers 13:1-2) and Moses then embellishes the mandate.
Rabinowitz correctly states that “the spies were not actually asked to voice an opinion on whether there was a chance to conquer the land.” Yes, but it was not the naysayers who first voiced their uncalledfor opinion on this subject.
It was Caleb who not only interjected his opinion, but had the temerity to call for an immediate invasion – rather a chutzpah on his part. It was only in reaction to Caleb’s hot-headed precipitousness that the 10 ‘bad’ spies first gave vent with hyperbolic negativity.
JJ GROSS Jerusalem
Sir, – If only Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz’s “We are not grasshoppers” was so. Unfortunately, the sin of the 10 spies lives on till this day. As Rabinowitz states in his article: “The spies failed where they should have made more of an effort and clung to faith...
[instead] they saw themselves as small, as grasshoppers, as lacking ability. They lost their confidence in God’s promise.”
This is as true today as it was then, which accounts for our inability to stand up for our rights to the land, and to instead run around the world begging our enemies and what passes for friends to intervene.
In other words, we are throwing the lifeline God gave us right back at him.
We praise ourselves for our magnificent innovations, and rightly so, but it is meaningless if we have lost our faith and courage and have reduced ourselves to being subservient to US President Barack Obama – who makes demands and we jump, just like the grasshopper.
If the rabbi is unhappy with the grasshopper syndrome, then let him show the people that he is not also a grasshopper and will no longer tolerate this absurd situation where our enemies set the agenda in the Jewish land at all our historic Holy Sites, giving the Wakf Muslim religious trust control over the Temple Mount. As he well knows, the Jewish people have to visit Joseph’s Tomb in the dead of night for fear of angering the Muslims.
And what about the fortress that has had to be built around Rachel’s Tomb? This attitude tells the world that we are indeed grasshoppers.
EDITH OGNALL Netanya Doing homework
Sir, – US Secretary of State John Kerry says he wants peace, but he doesn’t want to face the problem that prevents it. And he just does not want to do his homework, does not want to learn. Most Israelis want peace but not the country’s suicide, which is the only option current Palestinian and other Arab leaders will give Israel for peace.
A doctor who treats only systems and not the disease often causes the death of the patient. The disease is Islamic fundamentalism and the terror it causes.
The Obama administration refuses to address what a great threat to Western civilization this disease is.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas continues in Yasser Arafat’s footsteps in making Hitler a hero for Palestinians. There are Palestinians who still really want peace, but a much lower percentage than before Oslo – and they are keeping very quiet, just to stay alive.
DAVID LLOYD Jerusalem