Our nerves are shot
Regarding “The IDF’s complex task: Dismantle Hamas and save the hostages while the diplomatic clock still ticks” (November 17), Herb Keinon hit the nail on the head when he said that millions of Israelis wake up each morning hoping to hear news of a hostage rescue. As we spend our days reading and watching the news and videos slowly coming out, our nerves are shot, and our hearts continue to break.
We go to sleep each night praying for our hostages and soldiers, and each morning nervously open our newspapers, praying for good news. May tomorrow’s newspaper bring the wonderful news we anxiously await.
BARBARA GOLDIN
Jerusalem
Bring all the hostages home. Bring all Diaspora Jews home to Israel. Bring all Jews home to their heritage.
RUTH ZIMBERG
Safed
A new UNRWA?
All over the world, the notion that Israel has no right to exist rests on the fantasy that Jews, in response to the Holocaust, marched in and threw innocent Palestinians off their land.
Writers, including Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel in “An opportunity in the midst of crisis” (November 17), propose that for the sake of Israel’s safety and Gazans’ well-being, masses of Gazans could move elsewhere. It may appear obvious that both sides would benefit.
But the anti-Zionists would also benefit as their scenario of Israel’s original sin is publicly reenacted; Jews responding to violence, with mass evictions and land seizures regardless of the individual evictee’s guilt or innocence. “So it has always been,” the world will grumble.
It’s envisioned that the relocated Gazans would receive international assistance. Would that be a new UNRWA, cultivating more generations of irredentists who believe they must return to the green pastures and babbling rivers of their usurped homeland?
The Japanese model from after World War II might work better, if some respected Gazan authorities could be persuaded to renounce their violent ideology and call for reconciliation to a new order without emigration.
MARK L. LEVINSON
Herzliya
Peace and prosperity
Many write about what to do next in Gaza, such as in “No Jewish settlements in Gaza – no security” by Omer Dostri (November 17). Security is an obvious problem, upon which most will agree. Reconstruction is, as well.
But then there is the subject of preventing this from happening again; a revival of Hamas-like rule. This has to come in the name of re-education, a dangerous subject. Israel must not be seen to be involved.
Solution 1: Persuade the international community to disband UNRWA totally. The Gazan civilians are refugees, just as tragically as any other refugee in the world. Their care should come under the UNHCR, the one and only bona fide global organization established to care for all refugees.
Solution 2: Overhaul the Gazan (Palestinian) education system. The Gazans are a young population. They need to be taught that living together with the neighbors (in all directions) is a must, and the only way to peace and prosperity. A Saudi-led program should be introduced. If ever a people put peace and prosperity first, it’s the signatories to the Abraham Accords, including, one hopes, Saudi Arabia.
STEPHEN POHLMANN
Tel Aviv
Distortion and fake news
“Psychological fight will endure long after war ends” (November 17) underscores the absolute necessity to accept the fact that the PR war against Israel’s enemies will go on for a long, long time, if not forever.
Israel needs to internalize that this is an overarching war front, just as the front lines in Gaza and on the Lebanese border are. Periodic hasbara efforts are woefully insufficient to combat the distortion and fake news which constantly flood the media landscape.
Ayelet Frish’s recommendations of publishing as graphically as possible and as soon as possible the many atrocities perpetrated by Hamas is spot on. I would add one suggestion. Publish a catalog of everything done to each of the bodies recovered and forensically examined, backed up by a reference to the autopsy or forensic examination notes made.
An indisputable record of these atrocities is desperately needed now, and for the future – so that no one will forget what happened on October 7.
ROD MCLEOD
Timrat
Saying anything positive
“Trump – a clear and present danger” (November 16) is another weekly hate column by Douglas Bloomfield. He alternates each week between vicious rage against former US president Trump and loathing Prime Minister Netanyahu.
This week, he added an attack against former president Richard Nixon. I guess he has no appreciation of how Nixon, by resupplying Israel during the Yom Kippur War, saved our country from destruction by Egypt and Syria. But that’s not important to Bloomfield, who is incapable of saying anything positive about a Republican.
It seems that the Post finds his regular hate columns perfectly acceptable for publication. Bloomfield says that Trump speaks like Hitler, and his rhetoric is “textbook Mein Kampf.” I once read the Post editor say that equating any current political figure to Adolf Hitler is not to be tolerated, but when it comes to Donald Trump, such statements seem to be fine for publication.
Bloomfield objects to Trump’s beliefs that people from Gaza who sympathize with jihadists shouldn’t be allowed to enter the United States, and that foreign students who participate in pro-Hamas protests should be deported. Should the Post publish Bloomfield’s support for people who hate and want to murder Jews to remain in the United States?
It would be nice if Bloomfield would despise Hamas as much as his contempt for Trump and Netanyahu. But I guess that’s too much to expect from him.
ALVIN REINSTEIN
Efrat
Quite tragically wrong
I usually enjoy Prof. Efraim Inbar’s insights, but in “Let the PA fail in Gaza” (November 15), I think he is seriously and quite tragically wrong.
He suggests that the inevitable failure of the corrupt Palestinian Authority, if granted ruling power in the Gaza Strip, would somehow magically translate into “the world” realizing that the Palestinian state fantasy has failed and that no more money should be poured into such a failed entity.
It is not clear who is supposed to pick up the pieces, but the supposed benefit is “satisfying Washington.”I find it astonishing that anyone living here with any sense can suggest that a group of people identical to Hamas, and with exactly the same aspirations to kill us and drive us out of our land, would be a good suggestion as a replacement for the leadership in Gaza, because it pleases the Americans.
I think that Prof. Inbar is only too aware that in Islamic belief, once they have taken hold of an area, it is theirs forever, never to be given up even if they temporarily lose control. We would be condemned to repeatedly having to fight off their latest attempt to murder us and drive us into the sea.
No matter how many times they might lose, once being allowed to rule those areas they would always blame us for any failure. Yes they would fail, but it would be our fault; we didn’t give them enough money, weapons, services, anything at all. They would blame us, and the rest of the world would agree with them.
No, the very last entity that should be mentioned in terms of authority in Gaza is Fatah, the PLO, the PA.
JOSEPH BERGER
Netanya
Remarkably clueless
Regarding “Borrell: Israel mustn’t be consumed with rage” (November 17): For someone who claims to have a reasonably thorough understanding of what those who survived Hamas savagery are going through and feeling, European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell is remarkably clueless.
He incorrectly assumes that this nation is being triggered by fits of rage and pointlessly cautions that it should not be all-consuming. Not surprisingly, the bias of the EU in general and Borrell specifically prevent any real understanding of what we are experiencing.
Does Borrell not fathom, for example, the risk that Israel took back in 2005 by handing over Gaza to Palestinian control? Not only was the hope of then-prime minister Ariel Sharon not realized, the exact opposite is what we now have. Instead of a Middle Eastern version of Singapore – one in which all neighboring nations could have benefited economically and culturally – Gaza has been converted into, for all practical purposes, one giant missile launching pad.
How can Borrell so offhandedly suggest that Hamas and the Palestinians are not one and the same? He must surely be aware that the Palestinians voted Hamas into office fully mindful of the platform on which the party was running, and that violent acts of Hamas would draw a response from Israel. Borrell has no right to excuse the “Palestinian people” from complicity in the hostilities that Hamas initiated.
Moreover, the horrific events of Simchat Torah were hardly spontaneous or unplanned. A major infiltration that included mass murder and the kidnapping of nearly 250 men, women, and children demanded the involvement of “ordinary” Gazans. The logistics of this venture – communication, transportation, concealment, weaponry – were hardly insignificant, and Hamas operatives alone could not have pulled off this travesty .
I’m prepared to accept that Borrell is indeed sincere in his expression of sympathy for the victims of the massacre and the plight of the hostages. The question is whether he is ready to convert that sincerity into a greater degree of EU support for Israel. Then, perhaps, he would truly understand what we in Israel are feeling.
BARRY NEWMAN
Ginot Shomron