Readers respond to the latest Jerusalem Post articles.
By LETTERS TO THE EDITORLetters(photo credit: REUTERS)Gas dealRegarding your story on the natural gas outline (“Netanyahu: Gas outline is critical to energy security,” December 9), it is very strange that no mention is made of the fact that the proposed gas deal does not include any clauses that prevent Noble Energy and other operators of selling their rights to whoever they please – which could include companies who are anti-Israel – and the buyers could easily by controlling gas supply prevent Israel from receiving gas for domestic use.Somehow this critical point was overlooked in the agreements. In addition, the complete reliance on one gas line in the dangerous security situation in the Middle East makes one wonder how well the government is prepared for energy security.DAVID GOSHENKiryat OnoFlawed assessmentUS President Barack Obama’s assessment of Muslims attitudes towards others is faulty and this will have a negative and unalterable impact on our liberal societies as Muslims migrate across Europe and North America (“In rare Oval Office address, Obama warns of new phase of terrorism,” December 8).Since French leader Charles de Gaulle turned his back on Israel and invited Islamic immigration, Muslims have set up 750 no-go zones in France, where sharia is the only law. Violence against infidels, and particularly against Jews, is rampant and goes largely unpunished, as authorities fear being targeted as Islamophobes.Jews are leaving Europe in record numbers. Two years ago, Martin Schultz, president of the European Union Parliament said, “Jewish people are living in fear.” In November, Rabbi Avraham Gigi, chief rabbi of Belgium said, “There is no future for Jews in Europe.”In just about every Western university the Muslim Students’ Associations, which, like Hamas, is the progeny of the Muslim Brotherhood, promotes the racist boycott, divestment and sanctions and the Israel Apartheid week movements.The correlation is obvious. Western anti-Semitism is growing in direct proportion to Muslim immigration.If history has taught us anything, it is that the Jew is the canary in the coal mine.LEN BENNETTOttawaLabeling productsIt is about time that we here in Israel and Jews around the world fight back economically to this outrageous EU maneuver (“Merkel backs EU policy on labeling settlement products,” December 8).We need to stop buying cars from Germany and France. We need to stop buying wines from Italy and France. There are plenty of good alternatives to EU goods and we need to show them that this has repercussions. Maybe we should picket an EU car showroom or wine store and bring it to the attention of customers entering these establishments. We cannot accept this policy lying down. The fact that the EU does not apply the same process to similar situations around the world makes this purely an anti-Israel move.HAROLD ZUDICK Modi’inAngela Merkel should have followed the advice of Bundestag President Norbert Lammert who told Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein in Berlin last week that the EU directive on labeling settlement products is unwise.Instead, she chose to follow a disastrous historical precedent.On April 1, 1933, a week after Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany, he ordered a boycott of Jewish businesses throughout Germany. That boycott was the prelude to the extermination of six million Jews in Europe.This year’s EU resolution was passed as the 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom was being publicly remembered. On Kristallnacht, Hitler upgraded his boycott to murder Jews, destroy Jewish businesses, demolish thousands of Jewish homes, hospitals, and schools, burn down 1,000 synagogues, and ship 30,000 Jews off to Nazi concentration camps.Applying a double standard concerning Israel, while ignoring that there are over 200 other territorial disputes worldwide, is European anti-Semitism revisited.MEL ALEXENBERG Ra’ananaDear friends in Israel, we have sent the following message to the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs.“Boycott. A most despicable cause of action when it fails to take into consideration the people or individuals who the boycotters suppose themselves to work on behalf of.In this special case, three different groups of people will be seriously harmed by the EU proposals, if they are enacted: • the Jewish Israelis, who are back on their ancient soil, which they have been bereaved of by a long line of powerful entities, years and decades and even millennia before the European Union emerged on the scene; • the local Arabs, who are hard-pressed to find equally rewarding jobs – if any at all – within the faltering economy of the so-called PA • and we, the ordinary people of Sweden and other countries, who, first of all, appreciate the Israeli products we have been purchasing for years, and second, hold to the principles of free trade which we thought the EU stood for in deed, not only on paper.To this opposition against the boycott preliminaries comes the nauseating feeling that Europe has learned nothing from what happened on this continent some 80 years ago, when the trumpets of propaganda blew the mighty signals: ‘Don´t buy from Jews!’ Shame on Europe! Shame on the EU! Shame on you, if you don’t realize the consequences of your action and call it off.”EWA EDÉN-MODÉN and GÖRAN MODÉN Gothenburg, SwedenIsraeli humanitarians I recently saw two stories in The Jerusalem Post that mention in passing the humanitarian work of Israeli doctors (The Chicago Tribune’s “Syrian refugee families find news lives in Chicago,” December 8, and Nicholas Kristof’s New York Times column “Hysteria about refugees, blindness on guns,” December 8).In the former, there’s a description of Dr. Nir Uriel, a Chicago Medical Center cardiologist and former IDF combat physician, who was treating Syrian refugees.And in the latter, focusing on refugees in Lesbos, Greece, is the sentence: “Some of the first aid workers Syrian refugees meet on landing are Israeli doctors: working for IsraAID.”The world must read more about this and realize the vital humanitarian work done by Israelis all over the world, especially regarding oppressed people.SAMMY BERGERKiryat OnoTrumped I was dismayed by the recent appearance,of two cartoons, both by the same artist, ridiculing and attacking the American presidential hopeful, Donald Trump (November 30 and December 2).Trump has said, on a number of occasions, that he loves Israel and strongly condemns Muslim extremism, and such (regrettably unfashionable) pro-Israel sentiments have surely contributed to the fact that he is maligned and demonized by much of the (largely left-wing) American media.Donald Trump may be a controversial person, who is noted for his outspokenness and non- PC opinions, but he has shown great support for Israel, and I think that we Israelis should appreciate his pro-Israel stance, and the Israeli media should refrain, as much as possible, from publishing anti-Trump cartoons.I do hope that Trump, who will be visiting Israel in the near future, will be made to feel welcome in our country. He deserves it.RHONA YEMINIGivatayimWhile Donald Trump is definitely not my choice for US president, his latest statement on Muslim immigration has a precedent in US history. During the Cold War, Communist Party members needed a special waiver to enter the US.MLADEN ANDRIJASEVIC Beersheba
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