"I am at a total loss to understand the phenomenon of babies being left in cars in the heat."
By JERUSALEM POST READERSLetters 370(photo credit: REUTERS/Handout )Absolute horrorSir, – I read with absolute horror “Baby dies after being left by Beit Hagai parents in car” (May 5).I am at a total loss to understand the phenomenon of babies being left in cars in the heat because their parents stop and jump out for a minute and that minute becomes half an hour, or because they do not remember or notice.This poor little mite was apparently forgotten. Forgotten! Wasn’t the child missed? Didn’t the parents notice the baby wasn’t with them? How on Earth does any sane, caring parent forget a baby in a car? It is beyond belief! As a mother and a grandmother I cannot imagine myself ever forgetting – unless, of course, I am so very engrossed in my so very important cellphone conversation that my mind is totally oblivious to the fact that I have a very precious child in the car and I simply “forget.”LINDA SILVERSTONEHerzliya PituahPrice tag attacksSir, – The quotation marks appeared in the wrong place in your headline “Cops investigate ‘price tag’ attacks against Israeli Arabs” (May 5). The headline should have been “Cops ‘investigate’ price tag attacks against Israeli Arabs.”MICHAEL ALGEKiryat TivonSir, – A letter to The Jerusalem Post is one way of expressing my outrage at the headline “Ex-Shin Bet chief: Israel does not intend to stop ‘price tag’ attacks” (May 4). I hope every Israeli will send a letter now demanding that the Shin Bet (Israel Security Service) swiftly brings to justice those who vandalize the property of fellow citizens.SUSAN ROSENBERGHaifaSir, – It was quite telling to read about former Shin Bet head Carmi Gillon’s words.While I and, I’m sure, the overwhelming majority of Israelis are totally against the price-taggers, leave it to Gillon, one of those who was so happy to spill the Shin Bet’s secrets in the documentary The Gatekeepers, to now use this situation to promote his leftist leanings.Far worse, note his comparison to the pre-state era when he proudly notes that people like him knew how to deal with the Irgun and Stern Group. These are the same folks who tried to murder Menachem Begin in their zeal to make David Ben-Gurion the uncontested dictator of the state.When quoting this kind of person, it would be instructive for the Post to first reveal the nature of the individual.CHAIM ABRAMOWITZJerusalemWe never leftSir, – Your editorial “Indomitable spirit” (May 5) unfortunately conveys a common misperception in expressing “prayers and hopes for an end to exile stored up over nearly two millennia....”The Jews never left. Roman-Byzantine- era synagogues all over the land, the Mishna and Palestinian Talmud, Roman recognition of the patriarch until the 5th century, and the yishuv’s joinder in the 614 Persian invasion show that the Romans did not “exile” the Jews.Archeologist Dan Bahat included in his Twenty Centuries of Jewish Life in the Holy Land: The Forgotten Generations a map showing 9th-century Jewish communities all over the land, of which we have knowledge a millennium later.The Crusaders acknowledged that Jews were “the last to fall” in fighting them at Jerusalem, and that Jews alone “courageously” held them off at Haifa for a whole month. Evidence abounds of an organized Jewish presence in the four holy cities, in Galilee and elsewhere during the final six Mamluk and Ottoman centuries of foreign rule preceding modern Israel becoming the Land of Israel’s next native state after Jewish Judea.As eminent British historian James Parkes wrote in Whose Land, the “heroic endurance of those who had maintained a Jewish presence in the land, and in spite of every discouragement,” wrote the Zionists’ “real title deeds.”It does a disservice to both the memory and meaning of the continuously present Jewish yishuv to speak of “exile” and “return.”Parkes bitterly criticized us for not making the continuous-presence case, and he was right.JEROME VERLINPhiladelphiaThe writer is author of Israel 3,000 Years: The Jewish People’s 3,000 Year Presence in PalestineA masterpieceSir, – Susan Hattis Rolef’s “How we remember the six million – and the 24,000” (Think About It, May 5) made my day. The truth and the way she tells it is more than food for thought.I would be very happy to sign my name under a masterpiece like this.OLGA P. WINDHolonNot all are YanksSir, – We are one the most cosmopolitan countries on the face of the globe, boasting olim from Japan, New Zealand, Hawaii and the rest of the planet, yet 14 of the questions in your “20 questions” quiz (Arts & Entertainment, May 5) can be answered only by those who were either born in or have an exceptionally high level of knowledge of the United States of America.Surely it is not beyond the wit of man to devise a quiz – if a quiz be required – that could only be answered by others.For those of us born elsewhere, it is more than sufficient to be faced in The Jerusalem Post, on a daily basis, with American spelling, American slang and endless reports of NBA, World Series and baseball games on a daily basis.To be faced with a positively discriminating quiz is more than this Cockney oleh can bear! STANLEY COHENJerusalemThe ‘a’ wordSir, – Warren Goldstein very clearly delineates reasons why labeling Israel an “apartheid” state is inaccurate and offensive (“Kerry’s sins,” Sinai Today, May 2). All of his reasons are true and compelling. But the most compelling argument is the one he neglects to make.South Africa’s apartheid policy was imposed upon an indigenous population by a colonial power. The colonial power had no claim to the land nor justification for its presence there other than its exploitation of that country’s natural resources for its own purposes.The Land of Israel, on the other hand, is home to the people of Israel. We are not displacing a native population as colonists, but are returning home to where we belong. Were we to be the minority population and allow the majority population (hostile or otherwise) to remain, we would still not be considered an apartheid state, as it would be within our privilege to rule over that majority given that this is our home, not theirs.BOB YERMUS JerusalemWhy us?Sir, – With reference to “Oklahoma prison halts execution, but condemned man dies anyway” (May 1), how ironic that in the US, brutal murderers are condemned to death and executed, yet Secretary of State John Kerry persistently calls on the government of Israel to release convicted murderers guilty of similar heinous crimes or worse.Is it not time that Israel learned from the US how to deal with such deadly people? SIDNEY LEVINEHendon, UK The right moveSir, – I’d like to say kol hakavod to Rachel Bresinger on her article “‘3 reasons to make aliya...and stay” (Comment & Features, April 30).I, too, left my extended family in Chicago when I made aliya almost five years ago. (Unlike Rachel, however, I had my husband and three children). I agree with everything that was said. Sure, it hasn’t been easy and my family thinks I’m crazy, but I, too, think it’s one of the best decisions I have made.The only regret is not coming earlier!SUSAN COOPERSMITHMa’aleh Adumim
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