Letters to the Editor, August 19, 2020: Sovereign leader
The readers of The Jerusalem Post have their say.
By LETTERS TO THE EDITORLetters(photo credit: PIXABAY)Sovereign leaderRegarding “PM presents doctrine: In the Mideast, strong make peace” (August 17), once again, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shows his true colors. He had three good years during US President Donald Trump’s first term to apply sovereignty if he had truly wanted to do so.To say that this deal with the UAE is “peace for peace” is absurd – it is still land for peace, only this time it is Yehuda and Shomron and the Jordan Valley. While peace is highly desirable, it should not have been conditional upon us “postponing” our sovereignty over our heartland.Now the all-so-important ties with the Arab countries who are suddenly lining up to be our allies will prevent us from properly applying sovereignty going forward, as we will not want to lose or anger our new “friends.” We will not want to jeopardize lucrative business deals for some territory. We have sold our birthright for a few pieces of silver.WENDY DEROVANMa’aleh AdumimWelcome to Israel, a satellite of the USA. We finally did it – we gave up our historic land in favor of the treacherous friendship of US President Donald Trump, his Jewish minions and cheap flights to the UAE (“Kushner: US will not agree to annexation for ‘some time,’” August 18.)White House senior adviser Jared Kushner states categorically, “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to a map dividing Judea and Samaria into a Palestinian state and a part that would belong to Israel.” In case anyone missed it, Netanyahu also agreed to the UAE demand for unlimited numbers of Moslems worldwide visiting Jerusalem and the Temple Mount and mostly referred to as “al Aqsa,” as it is already under their control. Bin Abdullah of the Oman Foreign Ministry affirmed its support “to achieve a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East and the need to resume the peace process negotiations and to fulfill the legitimate demands of the Palestinian people (which does not and never has existed) to establish their independent state with east Jerusalem as its capital.” Victory for our enemies – and possibly what could be not only another “own goal” for Israel, but the one that will lead to its destruction. EDITH OGNALLNetanyaGaslighting from Gaza“Stoppage of fuel supplies fails to halt Hamas balloons” (August 14) shows that our failure is a military and governmental one. Our politicians and generals constantly 1) say that we do not war with Hamas and the other terrorists in Gaza and 2) conduct only simple air attacks causing minimal damage, so this gives terrorists no incentive to curb their violence.I have two suggestions: We should take out terrorists preparing to launch their fire balloons – a preemptive doctrine once used by the IDF – having the Iron Dome and tanks prepared for their counter strike.My second choice is to start burning their agricultural areas by any means available, tit for tat.Giving them monthly Qatari money (approximately 30 million dollars periodically) is just paying the blackmailer or extortionist. Once you start there is no end; the only way to stop it is to eliminate the said individual or group.Eventually our government and military will need to fight the terrorists in Gaza, so they must choose the time and place to attack. These terrorists will not go away by coddling them as we have been doing, and each time we go to fight, our casualties – both military and civilian – become higher. This is the reality we live in .MURRAY JOSEPHKiryat MotzkinHow do terrorists in Gaza get the helium gas for their incendiary balloons?The resurgence of the use of incendiary balloons from Gaza has highlighted the failure of the security apparatus in stopping helium from getting into Gaza. Insufficient public pressure has been applied to this governmental failure and the powers in authority have only been retroactive in attempting to stop these balloons rather than proactively curbing the supply of helium.Too many political and military commentators are totally out of their depth and do not know that the inert helium is removed from natural gas.MRI scanners have a liquid helium capacity in the order of 1,700 liters that is equivalent to 1,590 kg., whilst a 450-cm diameter balloon holds 2.83 gr. of gaseous helium. The loss of liquid helium in an MRI scanner is dependent upon the type and manufacturer, ranging between 1% and 6% per month. Gaza has five or six MRI units. The total monthly supply of liquid helium to Gaza should not exceed 95 to 572 kg, equivalent to filling 33,000 to 200,000 balloons per month!The question that urgently needs to be answered is how the helium reaches Gaza. Effectively the Gaza/Egypt border is sealed, the Gaza coast is patrolled by the Israeli Navy and Air Force, and the Gaza/Israel boundary is hermetically sealed by a well-patrolled fence. Thus the only point of entry of the helium is through the respective crossing points at Keren Shalom and Erez that are supervised/controlled by Israel. The source could be Israeli companies, transshipment of containers arriving in Ashdod to Gaza or from Jordan via the Allenby Bridge crossing point. Irrespective of the details supplied on the container manifest, it is vital to inspect every shipment thoroughly. We should not be concerned if the people of Gaza suffer inconvenience by this action – after all, it is our homes, businesses and fields that are being destroyed. Off-the-shelf balloon kits with disposable helium cylinders together with balloons are available worldwide and can be sent through the post.The fields of the communities adjacent to Gaza have been burning for far too long for this farcical situation to continue. It is incompetence at the highest levels that is responsible for the failure to stop helium from entering Gaza and the people of Israel have been misled by the media and respective spokespersons. The Israel Central Bureau of Statistics maintains records of all imported and exported products except that shipped in to and out of Gaza via the Israeli crossing points and COGAT either does not have or is unwilling to provide information.Is this yet another cover up?DR. COLIN L LECIJerusalemMeanwhile, back in the USA...It’s a historic event in America with the selection of Senator Kamala Harris as Joe Biden’s running mate (“Biden running mate Harris looks to unify,” August 13). Within America’s identity politics, I was confused to see Harris described variously as colored, Black, southern-Asian and Indian. There was also confusion as to where they fit in the political spectrum. Harris is described as moderate, whereas still-presumptive presidential candidate Joe Biden has said he will be America’s most progressive president ever if elected. Indeed he has folded into his platform the extreme Green New Deal of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, which seemingly bans gasoline and planes from the States.The elephant in the room within the Biden-Harris speeches so far and within the American media (which has mostly morphed away from actual news reporting through opinion and into full-throttle activism), is the almost total disregard of the violent rioting, murder and mayhem going on in many American cities for the last three months. In Chicago, where many stores were looted on the Magnificent Mile recently, the Black Lives Matter leader there justifies the looting simply as “reparations.”The Democratic Party needs to take a stand on the urban violence and what they intend to do to stop it.DAVID SMITHRa’ananaRarely does one see an opinion piece as completely off-base as Micha Halpern’s “We need a friend in the White House” (August 18). Mainstream Jewish America was not boxed out of the Obama White House; they idolized him, donated to him and fawningly submitted to every anti-Israel action he undertook.Barack Obama came into his presidency with a preconceived animus toward Israel, which he never changed until the day he left – including not only the JCPOA, but also saddling us with a term-ending biased and harmful anti-Israel UN Security Council resolution.The road to having a friend in the White House for Jews is to give up entirely on the Democratic Party, which has long not been a friend to Jewish values or the Jewish state.CHAIM A. ABRAMOWITZJerusalemRami Levy sues the UNI am filled with admiration for Rami Levy following his decision to sue the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) with the help of NGO Shurat HaDin after the supermarket that bears his name and his cellular service company were placed on the blacklist for doing business in Jewish areas of the West Bank (August 18).Levy’s Palestinian employees earn three times the average of other Palestinians. This corrupt and cynical tentacle of the UN should be disbanded and the suit should serve as a warning to the “United” Nations that its days as well are numbered. The enlightened world will soon come up with an alternative; less biased, less racist and less dominated by third-world and Muslim undemocracies.YIGAL HOROWITZBeershebaCOVID: Truth is the victimRegarding “Gamzu: Perhaps there is no choice but closure” (August 12), I have been following the efforts here, in the USA and elsewhere, to harness technology to deal with the current pandemic, and am struck by the focus on vaccines instead of treatments.Successful treatments exist and are being added to each week by doctors in all parts of the world trying out what seems potentially helpful.One of these is hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) an anti-malaria medication apparently uncovered as a COVID-19 treatment by researchers in France and used with great success by Dr. Zev Zelenko in New York State. Instead of being welcomed and developed further by the medical and pharmaceutical establishment as one would have expected in a perfect world, it has been belittled, smeared and ignored by Dr. Anthony Fauci, the CDC and the FDA in the USA. As an Israeli, this does not bother me nearly as much as the fact that the authorities in Israel seem to have followed suit, preferring politically correct compliance instead of pursuing objective truth.Luckily, in the USA there remain some medical practitioners who remember their Hippocratic oath and still take it seriously, and there has arisen a grassroots movement calling itself “America’s Frontline Doctors.” They attest to the success of their defiant and illicit treatment of their COVID-19 patients by prescribing HCQ plus zinc and azithromycin, for early treatment as originally prescribed back in March by Zelenko in New York.This will not be news to Prof. Ronni Gamzu, whose work should include keeping up with international research developments in this field. There seems to me to be no reason why the Israeli response to the pandemic should be influenced by the unholy alliance of the US Democrat Party and “Big Pharma,” whose humanity is obliterated by their ideology and greed respectively.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.Let’s salvage what we can of the economy and not waste any more lives.There is only one drawback – “Big Pharma” will have to give up their vaccine plans to milk the public of billions, and oh yes! US President Donald Trump will turn out once again to have been correct.STEPHEN HANDLERRa’ananaDershowitz decencyIn your excellent article “Alan Dershowitz’s reversal of fortune” (August 14) you conclude rightly that Dershowitz is as innocent of alleged sexual crimes as anyone else in his situation would be at this stage. That’s not my problem with Mr. Dershowitz. What rankles my Dutch/Israeli sense of decency is that Dershowitz “explains” his involvement with Jeffrey Epstein is that for him it was no more than a business decision to help Epstein to remain outside the reach of the US justice system. Never mind honor, honesty and compassion for the victims of his crimes. His “obligation” to his client is to get him the best deal possible. That, to Mr. Dershowitz is moral and “the name of the game.”Not to me it isn’t.I watched with mounting rage how some months ago a brilliant judge (now a Justice) and a man of impeccable character was nearly destroyed by a pack of House Democrat mercenaries who wanted to hurt the US president. They went after Justice Brett Kavanaugh in much the same way that Alan Dershowitz wanted to save Epstein – whatever it takes !Do we want this kind of justice in Israel? I don’t think so.FRANK J. VAN BERSKfar SabaGenerally speakingRegarding “Benny Gantz’s last chance” (August 16), my question to Uriya Rosenman is, “With your background as a ‘researcher of the connection between the human psychology, public consciousness and politics in Israel’ why would you expect Gantz to ever rise to the immense challenge of being prime minister?”I sit amused and bemused every time an ex-military person steps forward claiming the right to be prime minister. Laughable. Perhaps Rosenman can explain that psychosis.Israel needs a ‘Pentagon,’ somewhere to continue to use the skills of retired generals if they truly have skills, but the likes of Ehud Barak and Gantz need to be kept far away from politics, where they can do great harm. Merely having been a soldier of some caliber does not entitle you to assume the mantle of leadership. What do you know of healthcare, education, international dynamics, infrastructure and so on?So as wonderful as the speech written for Gantz might be, he is totally incapable of beginning to fulfill the promises he would be making.M. LEVENTHALToronto/Jerusalem
