By JERUSALEM POST STAFFLetters in Issue 25, March 30, 2009 of The Jerusalem Report. click here to subscribe.
Letters to the Editor are welcomed, please email to jrep@jreport.co.ilAliyah as empowerment...
Anne Roiphe is appalled that Avigdor Lieberman should be in an Israeli government (Viewpoint, March 16). So am I. But her attempt to tell me or anyone else in Israel how to vote, that is reinventing chutzpah.
If Roiphe wants to influence Israeli elections, let her do what I did 50 years ago: come on aliya. I am legally permitted to vote in American elections, but I never have. I feel that I have no moral right to do so.
Dova Zitt-Aroeti
Kfar Saba
...and as refuge
I was in Buenos Aires in the middle of the Gaza war. The TV coverage was not unfair, far better than CNN or BBC, but my impression was that the local community was scared and wanted to hide itself.
So it was no surprise to read of the anti-Semitic incidents that occurred shortly after my departure (The Reporter, March 2). What surprises me is that the Jews stay put. There is a country ready to welcome them with open arms.
Peter Simpson
Jerusalem
Innocent Kids
Doug Greener's critique of Avi Katz's February 2 cartoon showing mirror images of terrified kids under bombardment misses the point (Letters, March 2). Katz is not equating the IDF with Hamas. The children in Gaza did not vote for Hamas, did not agree to have weapons stored in their homes, and are every bit as innocent as the children of Sderot.
The bias of the international news media should not blind us to the bias of the Israeli media. During the Gaza war there was relatively little coverage of the civilian suffering on the other side, and Avi Katz is simply trying to correct this.
Samuel D. Oman
Jerusalem
Survival in Sewers
Your reviewer Netty C. Gross cites Holocaust scholars, when referring to Krystyna Chiger's "The Girl in the Green Sweater: A Life in Holocaust's Shadow" as the "only known wartime record of survival in this fashion" (Books, March 16). The memoir may indeed be the only published first person account, but the story of survival in the sewers of Lvov has been known for many years.
My beloved teacher, Halina Wind Preston, the major force behind Holocaust Commemoration Day in Delaware, was one of those survivors, and she told her story many times. Her son, David Lee Preston recounted it in his 1994 "The Sewer People of Lvov." And as Gross herself points out, Robert Marshall's book, "In the Sewers of Lvov" came out four years before that.
Esti Allina-Turnauer
Netanya
Disraeli's Friends
Matt Nesvisky's review of Adam Kirsch's "Benjamin Disraeli" (February 16) makes it clear that Disraeli's relationship to his Jewish roots can be described as singular, perhaps even eccentric.
However, Stanley Weintraub's 1993 "Disraeli: A Biography" provides abundant evidence that Nesvisky's statement (whether he is quoting Kirsch or not is unclear) that Disraeli "rarely associated with [Jews]..." is incorrect. Disraeli maintained long-term friendships with the members of both the London and and French branches of the Rothschild family.
Diana Shye
Jerusalem
Letters in Issue 25, March 30, 2009 of The Jerusalem Report. click here to subscribe.
Letters to the Editor are welcomed, please email to jrep@jreport.co.il