What are you talking about?
Your article “Balad head blames bus shooting on ‘occupation’” (August 22) reports on a radio interview with Balad leader Sami Abou Shehadeh in which he refers to the Israeli “occupation.” Since he is an Israeli MK, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he is only referring to the land captured by Israel from Jordan in the Six Day War.
It is very disturbing that there was no mention of the interviewer asking Shehadeh the most obvious question: What are you talking about?
Anytime any Israeli hears the word “occupation” in regard to the Palestinians, he should immediately reply: How can you use that word? Aren’t you aware that it was Jordan that was occupying that land from 1948 until Israel recaptured it in 1967 after attacks by Jordan against Israel?
As a result of the Six Day War, that land returned to its original status as part of the Palestine Mandate. Since Britain relinquished any responsibility for Palestine, the Palestinians can claim, at best, that the area is “disputed” territory since, prior to 1948, it was populated by both Arabs and Jews and the Arabs refused to accept the 1947 UN Partition Plan.
Unfortunately, the word “occupation” is used very often in this context, and very rarely does it get the proper response. Our government should be encouraging all its citizens to properly reply to this word whenever they hear it and require all government employees, especially those employed by the Foreign Ministry, to properly reply if they hear it in the course of their work.
We should not remain silent no matter who utters it – even foreign heads of state, journalists and members of our Knesset. We must make every effort to convince the world that we are not occupying any land that we have no right to settle.
Perhaps once the international community is convinced that the land is not occupied, it will put pressure on the Palestinians to negotiate in good faith for a permanent solution to the conflict.
RAYMOND ARKING
Modi’in
Keep the peace
If Benny Gantz truly believes Jerusalem cannot be the Palestinian capital and that the city, in its entirety, belongs to Israel (“Gantz: J’lem is Israel’s, it can’t be Palestinian capital,” August 23), isn’t it time he let Jordan’s king know about it?
Abdullah’s authority there should be just to keep the peace and prevent the manifestation of local Muslim hatred for Jews; perhaps even to ensure the Temple Mount is kept clean and not made into a warehouse for attack stones. He and the Wakf should have no right to prevent Jews or any other people with different religious beliefs from visiting or even praying outside of the mosques. Furthermore, all excavations at the site should be forbidden unless carried out by Israel’s Antiquities Authority.
Permit me to point out that his statement implies he believes there could be a Palestinian state in the heart (and soul) of our country, whether ruled by Fatah or Hamas, one whose people have an abiding hatred for Israel and its Jewish citizens – only that Jerusalem will not be its capital.
When will Gantz and his leftist cohorts realize that all the land from the river to the sea is Jewish land under international law and that the so-called Palestinians are a bogus identity created for just one purpose: to rid the land of the Jews. Only Jews were, and still are, the Palestinians, and the title cannot be transferred to any other people. We have the flag to prove it.
EDMUND JONAH
Rishon Lezion
Serious in their intent
The most chilling part of Catherine Perez-Shakdam’s article “The Jewish question 2.0” (August 21) was the quote from the fortunately now deceased Iranian general “Having all Jews in one country makes it a lot easier! The cancer must be eradicated, never to be allowed to return.” I think that most Israelis realize that the Iranian leaders are serious in their intent to eliminate the Zionist entity, but I am not sure that the Jewish Diaspora gets it.
The recent murder attempt on Salman Rushdie was the intention of the 1989 fatwa to eliminate the author who Ayatollah Khomeini decided was an offense to Islam. Having recently read Rushdie’s book, The Satanic Verses, I asked myself the obvious question as to why the Christian leaders did not call for the slaughter of the writers of the far more critical work of fiction, Life of Brian.
The article should be required reading throughout world Jewry, and particularly by the American Left in their quest for pragmatism.
DAVID SMITH
Ra’anana
A future diplomat
Once again, as in January, this time, on August 22, Issy Lyons graces the pages of the Post with a thoughtful, thought out, articulate article, this time titled, “Finding my voice.” The article gives us a glimpse into the musings of a young woman who will be embarking on the adult road to becoming “grown-up” after the army.
She talks about the differences between post-high school teens in the Diaspora and Israel. While most outside of Israel are choosing colleges and career options, our teens here are preparing to defend us with their lives. College is not in their immediate future.
Issy realized that “defense of the Jewish people could not merely be through words,” and so made the decision to “draft into the Israeli Defense Forces.”
How mature of this 19-year-old to be able to back up her feelings for the Jewish land with action. She made aliyah and has been serving proudly in a combat intelligence unit on the Syrian border.
Based on her maturity, love for Israel, and her proud Jewish heritage, she will make her mark in the years to come as she goes to college, and develops her incredible knack for telling it like it is. She is a future diplomat in the making and that’s the path she should take to grow and mature.
Good luck to you, young lady. You have found your voice... now shout it from the rooftops!
DEBRA FORMAN
Modi’in
Cannot stand quietly by
As a dual Israeli-US citizen residing in Israel, I read “Who gains when Diaspora Jewry loses?” (August 22) with much interest. With the history of the Jewish people over many centuries, during which large percentages of our fellow Jews lived outside of Israel, it is incumbent upon those of us living in Israel, our people’s homeland, to do whatever we can to assist our brethren living outside of Israel, in the galut.
We cannot stand quietly by, as some misguided brethren of ours, nominally appointed to assist Diaspora Jews return to our homeland, misappropriate funds. Shame on them.
As the expression goes: “How low can you go?”
MICHAEL D. HIRSCH
Tzur Yitzhak
Victimization game
Regarding “Bella Hadid claims she has lost friends, jobs due to anti-Israel stance” (August 21): Hadid’s production team did an incredible job. They hooked on to the Palestinian victimization game and turned just another pretty face into an international supermodel.
Bella’s Palestinian father, who became a real estate magnate in America, was actually a Jordanian, born in Nazareth. There were no Arabs who referred to themselves as Palestinians during the British Mandate. Only the Jews were called that.
Mandate Arabs, like Arabs everywhere, have loyalty to their families and clans and to where they originated from. The Palestinian pseudo-ethnicity was created in 1964 when the KGB formed the Palestine Liberation Organization.
So, we needn’t feel sorry for Bella, who grew up in luxury and has a successful, glamorous career.
LEN BENNETT
Ottawa
Bottles of champagne
Richard Schwartz, crusading vegetarian, wants to “restore that ancient Jewish holiday” of 1 Elul, the “New Year’s Day” for animals (“Restore and transform,” August 21).
Holiday? Please. As per the Mishna (Rosh Hashanah 1:1), 1 Elul was the new fiscal year for owners of livestock, a tax accounting date to determine when domesticated animals required tithing. It was of no significance to other animals, birds, fish, or people who did not raise livestock.
It was as much a holiday as is October 1 for corporations which begin their fiscal year on that date: not exactly an occasion to pop open bottles of champagne, nor a Day of Judgment or reflection – neither for animals nor humans.
Furthermore, the tithing was to provide animals for sacrificial slaughter in the Temple. Should the Temple be rebuilt and animal sacrifice reinstated, the “ancient Jewish holiday” of 1 Elul would presumably be restored as well. Yet, I gather that such true restoration of 1 Elul is not the “holiday” Schwartz envisions.
Advocacy for animal welfare is all well and good; but spare us from that which is based on misleading representation of Jewish text and custom.
ABRAHAM KATSMAN
Jerusalem
Terror from a hospital bed
Hadas Ziv believes that she has the right to usurp the meaning of ethics in the medical treatment of Palestinian terrorists (“When ethics fail,” August 23). In her warped woke mentality if a Palestinian terrorist goes on a hunger strike in an Israeli hospital, he has the right to the same medical conditions and treatment as an Israeli child suffering from cancer.
He has the right to tie up a hospital bed endlessly and increase the crowding in already crowded hospitals. He has the right to full, immediate and top-notch medical treatment, diverting urgently needed attention from the innocent children, the sick and elderly crowding the corridors. In brief he has the right to continue his political and terrorist activities even from his hospital bed, graciously provided by the misguided Israeli public, bewildered by the interpretation of ethics usurped by the self-crowned “Physicians for Human Rights-Israel.”
YIGAL HOROWITZ
Beersheba
Magnified the calamity
The infamous comment by Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas on Israel and the Holocaust (“Germany’s Scholz ‘disgusted’ at Abbas’s ‘holocaust’ remark,” August 18) reminds us that the Arabs were guilty in no small measure for the terrible dimensions of the Holocaust.
When Hitler in the 1930s started driving Jews out of Germany, the logical solution was that they should be admitted into Palestine. Arab threats to unleash a war against such a move deterred the British from any such proposal and led to the White Paper.
Thus, at the moment of greatest need for rescue, the Arab role magnified the calamity of the Holocaust.
PROF. SHLOMO SLONIM
Beit Shemesh
Some protesters went overboard
Regarding “Can America save itself?” (August 15): It seems that to Sherwin Pomerantz, the only America worth saving is a progressive woke liberal America.
But he makes some glaring errors in his op-ed piece.
First of all, how was the Capitol “violently invaded” when the Capitol Police opened the doors for the protesters to let them in? It’s true that some of the protesters went overboard while inside the building, but we’ll never know who the protesters were and who the Antifa, BLM and undercover FBI guys were.
Second, in stating that only 14 Republican legislators voted for a gun legislation bill just weeks after 19 children and two teachers were killed in Uvalde, Texas, Mr. Pomerantz is stating that this new legislation is the only legitimate response to that heinous killing in Texas. He discounts any other solutions to the active shooting crises currently going on in America.
Third, he restates the blatant lie that overturning Roe v. Wade “now takes away a woman’s right to determine how she controls her body.” It does no such thing. By overturning the Roe v. Wade decision, the Supreme Court handed back to the individual states the decision of whether abortion would be legal in each state. This decision rightly cuts back the federal government’s control over the lives of Americans.
This is the basis of the liberal democrat progressive agenda. They want the federal government to control the lives of American citizens, but only if they, the progressive, woke, liberal Democrats are in power.
The Republican conservative agenda is to limit the power and control of the federal government over the lives of everyday citizens. This is what the founding fathers of America had in mind – more freedom for its citizens from the tyranny of government, any government.
As president Ronald Reagan famously said years ago: “The top nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’”
NORMAN L. DEROVAN
Ma’aleh Adumim