September 2: Deter the terrorists

It’s high time that Israel incorporates capital punishment for murder committed by terrorists.

By JERUSALEM POST READERS
letters 88 (photo credit: Courtesy)
letters 88
(photo credit: Courtesy)
Deter the terrorists
Sir, – Regarding “Four killed in spray of bullets on car near Kiryat Arba on eve of DC summit” (September 1), it’s high time that Israel incorporates capital punishment for murder committed by terrorists.
Why is the murder of Jews in Israel (or elsewhere) any different from what the Nazis did? Is the killing of a Jew today any less hideous than what was done in the Holocaust? Israel does have a capital punishment law for ex- Nazis. Why are terrorists any different? URI HIRSCH Netanya
Sir, – With unfortunate growing counterproductive public pressure against the government, to give in to Hamas’s demands to release 1,000 prisoners in exchange for Gilad Schalit, yesterday’s horrendous perpetrators don’t seem to have anything to worry about. When Israeli security forces find them, all they have to do is raise their hands in order to make sure they will be back at home in the near future. After being sentenced to life imprisonment, they can simply wait for their coming release in exchange for Gilad Schalit, or his unfortunate successor.
If the perpetrators of the Park Hotel massacre and similar atrocities are to be freed, why should the terrorists who murdered four Israelis not join the mass exodus of terrorists from Israeli prisons?
AHARON COPPERMAN Petah Tikva
Sir, – In the wake of the recent terrorist attack on Route 60 which left four Israelis dead, I suppose left-wing apologists for Arab terror will resurrect the vile phrase “victims of peace.”
All victims of Arab terror – preand post-Oslo – are victims of war, not of peace.
LEVI J. ATTIAS
Ma’aleh Adumim
It’s not deportation
Sir, – Will you please stop the nonsense! Israel is not deporting people from the Philippines, China, Ghana, Sudan, Eritrea and so forth (“Foreign workers’ kids head to school, despite uncertain future,” September 1). The word is repatriation.
All these people have a country, a language, a history, a culture and tradition.
RIVKA ARMONI-EYAL
Ramat Gan
Do do-gooders do harm?
Sir, – In petitioning the High Court of Justice against the withdrawal of three of MK Haneen Zoabi’s parliamentary privileges (“IDF commandos ‘came to kill peaceful activists’ on the Marmara, Zoabi tells UN panel,” September 1), prominent left-wing politicians claim that such withdrawal would not permit freedom of expression for those holding unpopular opinions.
Left-wing do-gooders should stop to consider how their defense of parliamentarians whose main desire is to blacken our name in world opinion causes us harm and bolsters the false claims of our enemies.
MONTY M. ZION
Tel Mond
Looking for Sadat
Sir, – Our ambassador in Washington, Michael Oren, expresses the belief that in the same way we established peace with Egypt by negotiation, we can do the same through the current talks with the Palestinians (“Naysayers are not always right,” September 1). I respectfully beg to differ.
In the former case, negotiations were between two sovereign states whose governments had the power to impose on their peoples the peace agreed upon, although it did cost Sadat his life. Both leaders saw it in their country’s interest to do so.
Not so with our Palestinian neighbors.
First, they have no undisputed or effective leadership.
Second, their past record, and the current statements of many of their leaders, indicate that their main aim is to get rid of Israel, as a Jewish or any other kind of state.
Third, they have been dragged into these negotiations against their will.
EDWIN HOFFENBERG
Haifa
Contact lenses and risks
Judy Siegel-Itzkovich states in her comprehensive article on the risks involved in wearing contact lenses (“Contact lens wearers are blind to the risks,” August 29) that some lenses are used in treating dry eye. Elsewhere, the article emphasizes that the most important lens safety rule is never to leave them on while sleeping.
I have suffered for years with nocturnal dry-eye. In addition to the excruciating pain, my condition was severe enough to bring about a tear in my cornea that became infected. As a result, I was a guest for a week at the Ophthalmology Ward of Shaare Zedek Medical Center.
No ophthalmologist who has examined my condition has done anything other than prescribe nightly use of a lubricating ointment – a treatment that has a number of drawbacks, including not always succeeding in keeping the inner eyelid from sticking to the upper corneal layer.
In contradiction to the advice never to leave one’s contact lenses in when sleeping, optometrist Hillie Cohen, manager of Einit Optics in Jerusalem, suggested using moist, zero prescription contact lenses at night as a bandage to separate my inner eyelid from my cornea.
Unlike most of the world, I wear my contact lenses only at night, every night, and remove them each morning. This has proven to be safe and the only solution that works for me.
ARDIE GELDMAN
Efrat
Claims against the Claims Conference
Sir, – Regarding Marilyn Henry’s article “If it ain’t broke, fix it” (Metro views, August 29), no amount of whitewashing – by someone who failed to mention that she had been on the payroll of the Claims Conference – can change the basic actuality.
Here are the facts: The Claims Conference’s board of directors consists of 24 institutions; 22 are not Holocaust survivors’ organizations.
Some are almost defunct, yet they usurped themselves the right to dispose of the funds intended for Holocaust victims.
Throughout each year, requests for emergency funds by destitute Shoah survivors are examined by unpaid, volunteer survivors who are not permitted to grant more than a maximum of $2,500 per year to any survivor, regardless of hardships.
Yet, there is apparently no limit to the amounts that are granted to institutions that have barely any nexus to the Holocaust or no justifiable need. Many are pet projects of a director’s organization. One recent example: an organization which had been able to raise $4.5 million on its own received more than $50,000 from the Claims Conference.
The recent leadership acts mostly like a handsomely rewarded forwarding service.
The former executive vice-president received an annual compensation of close to $500,000.
Without consulting any survivor groups, hundreds of millions have been granted over the years to hospitals, nursing homes and other institutions, because they occasionally service survivors (for payment).
That’s like subsidizing the railway because survivors sometimes take the subway.
Ms. Henry ought to advise the CC board members to stop all allocations to their pet projects, to let survivors decide whether institutions ought to get any allocations at this point in time when there is such a huge level of destitution among elderly survivors, and to ask most of these institutions to return these undeserved funds that rightfully belong only to survivors.
LEO RECHTER
President, National Association of Jewish Child Holocaust Survivors Flushing, NY