Letters to the Editor, August 11, 2021: WoW and Sbarro

Regarding “Despite threats, Women of the Wall service takes place in relative calm” (August 10), having been witness to very unpleasant scenes on Rosh Hodesh at the Western Wall, it was nice to read that a top Masorti rabbi said, “With so few protests, prayers were ‘almost uplifting.’”

However, August 9 marked the 20th year after the terrorist Sbarro bombing, a blast that rocked Jerusalem and affected thousands of people. Wikipedia calls it the Sbarro Massacre. 

In that event, 15 people were murdered, including seven children. Families on a summer vacation outing lost their lives at the pizzeria in the center of town. Over 100 people were injured. One of them, Chana Nachenberg remains in a vegetative state 20 years later.

I looked twice on August 9, and again on August 10 in the print editions, but could not find a single word to commemorate or remember this terrible tragedy. Let us not forget.

Now that the incendiary helium-filled balloons have yet again recommenced being sent from Gaza (“IDF attacks Hamas base, rocket launcher in response to balloon fires,” August 7), surely it is time for the government to think out of the box. The liquid helium source probably originates from Israel, some used to top up the blow down caused by heat inleak in to the MRI scanners in the Gaza hospitals and perhaps some commandeered by the terrorists. 

To avoid the humanitarian accusations if Israel denies supply of liquid helium to Gaza, the patients who require scans could be transported after proper inspection and under guard to Israeli hospitals to be scanned and sent back with the results – the cost being borne by the PA. This way no liquid helium needs to be supplied to Gaza and accusations of “humanitarian crisis” avoided and no more balloons to destroy our homes, crops, fields and forests.

In your editorial “Corona cabinet” (August 8) you join the media frenzy in attacking the lack of attendance of the foreign minister and finance minister. Why would one would think Yair Lapid and Avigdor Liberman should be involved in decision-making processes that are above their pay grade?

After all, didn’t all the media criticize the previous Netanyahu government for politicizing corona instead of allowing the health professionals to make the decisions necessary?

By the new government subscribing to the logical process of letting those that are in the health field come up with solutions and leaving the foreign minister the time to ply his trade and the finance minister work on the budget, aren’t we finally depoliticizing corona as much as possible?

Dear people (1.1 million of you) who can vaccinate but have opted not to (“Expert: 1.1 million ways to prevent lockdown here,” August 9), I am a reasonable person and as a professional, my job is to listen and not pass judgment. Most times I think I do this well. Having said that, I am feeling angry at you and feel that you need to know it. 

I am thinking of you as incredibly inconsiderate, selfish and misguided. I am going out on a limb here but I’m making the assumption that as a child, your parents had you vaccinated and that you reaped the benefits of playing with your friends rather than being home, suffering in the hospital or being buried in the ground. They were smart enough to vaccinate you against all kinds of things that are in large part eradicated in most of the world. 

Yet, you choose not to follow the sanity of your parents, but rather put your parents and your children and those who you call your friends at great risk. That’s okay I guess, because as awful as it is, it is your choice, and I would hope that you stay away from anyone you might infect. However, my entire family are medical personnel and two of them have had to suit up on a regular basis in horrible heat for long hours to take care of corona patients in the hospital. They did it with tremendous dedication, but you put them at great risk and I’m resentful of that. And yes, long COVID is a real thing. Ask my loved ones who have been impacted.

I admit, I haven’t a clue as to what is under the hood of my car, but I take my car in to get fixed by professionals who do know, and I have no reason not to trust them. Now I’m dealing with my life and that of my loved ones. Yes I read the professional and lay literature but also recognize that those who know more than I ever will are looking after my safety. I wish that I could say the same about you. 

Speaking of safety, it is illegal to drive a car without wearing a seatbelt. Tell me, is it going against your basic right not to be catapulted out of the car if you drive poorly? I am guessing that you are smart enough to wear a seatbelt and are smart enough to ensure that your children and your parents buckle up. But possibly you feel you should have free choice over this decision too. 

I fortunately have a choice not to see you face-to-face in my clinic if you opt not to vaccinate. My family that work in the hospital day and night, risking their and their family’s health sadly do not have that choice. And so yes, while I am very good at being nonjudgmental, you need to know that your selfishness and stupidity make you persona non grata. I understand enough about your behavior to enable me to choose wisely and to not associate with you. But I don’t like that you have forced me to not be there for you. We have a war out there and while vaccination may not be a guaranteed weapon, it is close as we are going to get for now. I urge you to choose to protect us all, while you still can.

I read “Is Delta sparing the haredim?” (August 6) and with all the reasons offered, I didn’t notice the one that seemed most obvious to me. Many of us probably remember in the early days of COVID when Naftali Bennett was part of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition responsible for protecting the population from the new disease. I remember him standing with clear visual aids illustrating that we must “flatten the curve” to reduce overcrowding/overwork or prevent collapse of the healthcare system.

Most of us followed instructions and the rates of contagion overall were lower than in two sectors of society: the haredim and the Arabs, which opted not to comply. 

Because the haredim and Arabs desisted from lockdowns and quarantines, a disproportionately high number became sick and many died of corona last year. Their new infection numbers are low now because they didn’t flatten the curve then. Those of us who obeyed the rules still have a large number of susceptible people, while many of theirs have died or acquired immunity after recovery. 

Since we now have vaccines, fewer of the “careful” regulation-abiding people will die or become seriously ill from COVID corona.

Maayan Hoffman lifted our spirits in “Sheba scientist says drug can treat COVID under $1 per day” (August 3) with her excellent piece about Prof. Eli Schwartz’s research demonstrating the efficacy of Ivermectin, while referring to the Big Pharma resistance to affordable generic medications. 

Yet in “A sad corona reality” (August 8) on the predicament of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett hardly knowing how to deal with the pandemic, she mentions nothing about the exciting prospect of Ivermectin.

Exactly a year ago you published my letter in which I included the following ‘Both HCQ and Ivermectin (another medication showing great promise) have the potential to reduce the pandemic to no more than a mild wave of the flu, by using them as a prophylaxis as well as a treatment in appropriate cases. Both are ex-patent and are cheaply available as generics.’

Since then we have unnecessarily lost a year and many lives – and many livelihoods.

Had Hoffman forgotten so soon her piece of the week before? Or has she been censored by the hidden hand of Big Pharma?

Our political and medical leadership need to find the courage to look at, and act upon the plentiful scientific evidence in support of early treatment and prophylaxis instead of slavishly following the arbitrary dictates of the conflicted people running the WHO, and the CDC and FDA in the USA, whose obstructiveness has so frustrated Schwartz from getting his important research report published.

This is Israel, not the US. We have been independent since 1948 and never has it been more important to show it.

Arye Deri is correct (“Letting Dolgopyat marry leads to the end of the Jewish identity,” August 5). Neither winning a medal nor the Nuremberg laws make Artem Dolgopyat a Jew. But, he could have been a Jew if the rabbinate had done the right thing by the hundreds of thousands of olim from the Former Soviet Union who obtained Israeli citizenship legally although they are not Jewish according to Halacha. The rabbinate should have reached out to all the olim from the FSU and welcomed them home, as zera Yisrael, offering all of them the education they and their forebears had been denied by the Communist regime and a smooth path to conversion for those not born of Jewish mothers.

Gershon Baskin (“Summer in Gaza,” August 5) provides a stunning example of moral equivalence. He correctly observes that two mentally unwell Israelis who entered Gaza are being held as hostages by Hamas. Then he says that 40 Palestinians previously released and later re-arrested are also hostages. 

These 40 were among the more than 1,000 security prisoners, many of them with blood on their hands, who were released in a deal for which Baskin has claimed credit as “initiator and negotiator of the secret back channel for the release of Gilad Schalit.” 

In personally brokering that deal he appeared to have given little thought to the anguish that these prisoners had caused to their victims and victims’ families, or the further pain their release would cause. The 40 whom he now calls “hostages” were re-arrested when they returned to their bloodthirsty endeavors despite promises to the contrary.

Baskin then identifies nearly 800 prisoners whom Israel could release in order to further the possibility of peace, though he admits that people in Hamas “are not yet prepared to accept that idea.” These prisoners include some who have already been held for more than 25 years “for doing some really horrible things,” but are ill, may have expressed remorse or “are no longer a risk to Israel’s security.” Others might be released to Gaza where they would “pose less of a security risk.” 

Nowhere does Baskin evince any appreciation for the concept of personal responsibility, nor does he recognize the various purposes for incarceration: punishment for past bad acts; protection of the public from future harm by the individual prisoners; and deterring other potential terrorists from committing similar violent acts. Early release runs contrary to all of these goals. 

Apparently, Baskin has learned nothing from the previous mass release of prisoners which he spearheaded. He was intimately involved in freeing the 40 whom he now calls “hostages.” The fact that these 40 renewed their efforts to harm Israelis proved the folly of such a mass release.  

While sometimes emotionally satisfying, trading or releasing large numbers of prisoner, especially for nebulous or ephemeral benefits, can do great harm to the Israeli public. 

Regarding “Raoul Wallenberg – another birthday with unanswered questions” (August 2) marking the 109th anniversary of the birth of Raoul Wallenberg I would like to bring to the attention of readers some facts relating to Wallenberg’s unknown fate.

In the mid 1980s when I headed the Raoul Wallenberg Rescue Committee in Jerusalem I received the sworn testimony of an elderly Caucasian immigrant named Chanukayev  who had been imprisoned by the Soviet authorities for Zionist sympathies in 1972. In a prison hospital in Sverdlovsk he had spent four days in a bed next to that of an elderly man that he helped to feed. The man told him that he was a Swedish diplomat named Raoul Wallenberg and that he had saved thousands of Jews in Budapest during the Holocaust. Chanukayev’s testimony makes nonsense of the Soviet claim that Raoul died of a heart attack in prison in 1947.

Then, amazingly, in 1989 we received a note in Russian signed Raoul and dated 9/9/89 saying: “I wish to announce that I have another name. Now my name is Erik Anderson. Under my family name I do not exist. Raoul.”

An accompanying letter states that the note was sent to our committee to prove that Wallenberg was still alive in prison in the city of Krasnoyarsk under name of Erik Anderson.

The serial number which appeared at the top of the note was either Raoul’s file number or his prison number.

At the time I sent these astounding facts directly to Russian president Mikhail Gorbachev but received no reply.

My hope is that when President Putin and his advisers hear these things they will at long last be courageous enough to resolve the tragic mystery of Raoul’s fate and bring some measure of comfort to his  long-suffering family and his multitude of admirers.

Regarding “Cabinet approves NIS 432.5b. state budget” (August 3), nowhere in the report on the budget is there anything addressing the smoking pandemic of Israel. Approximately 8,000 Israeli deaths per year are associated with smoking – far more than all the COVID deaths combined!

What’s needed: a new dedicated significant cigarette tax with the funds 100% allocated for anti-smoking education, advertising and especially enforcement of existing laws. It’s a tax that will ultimately multiply its benefits via savings from reduced mortality, hospitalizations and social welfare payments to widows and orphans. 

Such a budgetary inclusion is necessary to help disincentivize smoking, and put the brakes on the great damage to the economy from loss of trained and experienced employees while improving health for all including those who suffer from secondary smoke illnesses.

Shmuley Boteach describes the beauty and serenity of Hawaii – the small islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean which became the 50th state of the USA in 1959 (“Healing after the passing of my father,” August 10). Boteach and family visited Hawaii after a year of kaddish for Boteach’s father. The struggle to find 10 people for a minyan during corona left him emotionally and physically exhausted. 

Think how great it would be if Israel was admitted as the 51st state of the USA. President Joe Biden would have to deal with the Palestinians; our crazy political/religious system of government with 20 or so parties would disappear overnight and we could all vote either Republican or Democratic. The IDF would join with the greatest military fighting force in the world. Our youth could serve on aircraft carriers. Visas to mainland USA would be unnecessary. The so-called rift with American Jewry would disappear since we would all be American Jews. 

I can’t think of a single disadvantage.