Letters to the editor: June 6, 2018

Our readers have their say.

By LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Updated: JUNE 3, 2018 20:14
Letters (photo credit: REUTERS)
Letters
(photo credit: REUTERS)
Gaza goings on
The manner Caroline B. Glick portrays the top brass of the IDF (“Who leads Israel?” June 1), I don’t think many of us can sleep tightly. Having an undisputed powerful army headed by senior officers who were certainly not trained at Sandhurst or West Point should give us cause for concern.
Rejecting the Prime Minister’s directives and showering humanitarian aid upon our enemies in Gaza is a path to our total capitulation. We’ve done that and all it has netted is endless red alerts for our southern communities and their families.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should take another look at these military personages whose defensive strategy was formed in Chelm. You don’t send Acamol and cough syrup to killers waiting to annihilate you and your family.
We seek total victory as the road to peace.
JULES EHRMAN
Jerusalem
Regarding “Gazan tells ‘Post’ about latest round of violence” (June 1), maybe the gentleman needs to be told that most of the hardships in Gaza are due to Hamas stealing the hundreds of millions of dollars intended for the people, who are therefore unable to improve their lives.
JUDY GOLDIN
Kiryat Ono
Regarding “The Gaza Plan” (May 31), for the life of me I cannot understand why the State of Israel should have to pay off the criminals in Gaza and even build them a sea port in Cyprus. This really seems like paying what we used to call “protection.” We pay them off and they don’t attack us (again).
I wish that the powers that be would not encourage this type of breast-beating guilt trip. We are not responsible for their mess. They launched more than 100 rockets and mortar bombs at us, intending to murder as many of us as they could. Only by the grace of God and the Iron Dome they did not succeed. We, on the other hand, tiptoed around, careful not to cause a single casualty with all our bombing of empty places.
THELMA JACOBSON
Petah Tikva
Merton Rappaport (“Look Gaza in the eyes,” May 30) is clearly delusional. Why and how are we supposed to resolve Gaza’s distress?
The people of Gaza are responsible for their distress, having voted in Hamas and being complicit in their dream of “slitting our throats and tearing out our hearts.” I think it’s time for the Arab leadership to say, “enough is enough.”
If they lay down their arms and cooperate with us they can have a better life. Are they not realistic enough to know that Israel is a fact and no “march of return” will make it otherwise?
I take offense at these “do-gooders” who keep putting the blame in the wrong quarter. We are not to blame for the distress in Gaza. Period.
FREYA BINENFELD
Petah Tikva
There have been articles calling for a “new approach” to Gaza, but they recycle the same old one – give the Gazans more, even though it gets stolen by Hamas. They destroyed greenhouses that could have given Gaza a thriving economy; they will do the same to any other productive enterprise.
It is time for a new paradigm that actually will help the people of Gaza. The PA is useless and was defeated before by Hamas. Gaza needs to be helped to where they can have leaders willing to live in peace with Israel. Remove Hamas. Israel cannot do this without world condemnation, but Egypt, Arab countries, and the Trump administration could.
Bring in Egyptian or other troops who can be somewhat trusted and have them make sure any aid goes directly to the people who need it. The Hamas leadership should be given the choice of leaving or being tried for war crimes against their own people and against Israel, and any confiscated Hamas bank accounts can be used to help Gaza.
STEVEN KOVNER
Shirley, MA.
In good faith
Regarding “Respect for Religion” (Editorial, June 3), the late, great Bernard Levin once said that he should be protected from “single-issue fanatics” and in the matter of Assistant Professor Pnina Peri, who disgraced herself by her obnoxious behavior toward a Chabad rabbi and a member of the public putting on tefillin in Ben Gurion Airport, I am reminded of the lady professor in a lift/elevator recently, who became so offended by a senior British professor who uttered the time-honored words “ladies’ underwear” as the lift moved between floors that she reported the man to his London University board of management with a request that he be dismissed.
What these two women [I won’t say ladies since that implies a degree of gentility] share is a complete immersion in their own field of academe to the exclusion of all else and which glorifies political correctness and simultaneously creates a climate in which men can do no right and women no wrong – a symptom of the sickness which political correctness has engendered over the past two generations.
For my own part, I am willing to forgive Peri for her outburst, citing the strong possibility of over-indulgence in alcoholic beverages on her flight or in preparation for it.
STANLEY COHEN
Jerusalem
I was happy to see an editorial on respect for religion that cited 1) the video of a woman harassing a Chabad rabbi who was putting tefillin on someone in an airport and 2) a satirical TV show where an actor impersonating Naftali Bennett is shown wearing tefillin on his head in a shocking manner.
The reference to the Pew research that showed that secular Israelis are more uncomfortable with their children marrying a haredi Jew than a Christian is alarming and, as pointed out in your editorial, this division between Jews is not acceptable.
However, I would like to point out that the JPost editorials often fuel this division, as do the many news articles that report on religious issues while never interviewing a haredi Jew to get their side of the story and never reporting on the many acts of kindness and volunteerism done by the ultra-Orthodox community for their fellow Israelis.
Editorials that blame the chief rabbis for every controversy, with never an interview or op-ed by the rabbis themselves, along with one-sided opinions bashing haredim can only keep the division alive and well.
LEAH URSO
Modi’in
Respect for religion needs to be earned, as we learn, inter alia, in Pirkei Avot, that people who are respected are those who respect people. Religious who men demand that women move to the back of a bus; beat up religious soldiers in a uniform they themselves refuse to wear in defense of their country; and live on government payouts instead of earning a living while badmouthing that same country don’t deserve respect.
If they claim that this behavior is based on the Torah, they are committing blasphemy and earn contempt. Until the haredim in the country behave according to the real, wonderful social and moral principles of the Torah – like practicing justice, brotherly love and the pursuit of peace – they will only reap what thy sow: alienation from our beautiful religion, the basis of much of human civilization.
URI THEMAL
Kiryat Tivon
A tale of two authors
What a difference between the legacies of two well-known American -Jewish authors who were recently in the news: Leon Uris and Philip Roth.
Uris was a star. Many years ago, at a graduate seminar in Jewish history at Columbia University, the world-renowned historian Prof. Salo Baron, said that the book Exodus by Uris did more to educate the world on the creation of the State of Israel than any other work. He emphasized that Uris’s historical research was meticulous.
Baron’s judgment was borne out only last week, when we read that a New Zealand stamp collector who returned a Shoah-era postcard to the heirs of the sender was “deeply impacted” by the works of Uris. (“New Zealand philatelist delivers Shoah- era postcards to writer’s J’lem descendants (May 31).
Contrast this with the legacy of Philip Roth, who was justly criticized as being “a self-hating Jew who played on negative stereotypes or generally cast Jews in a negative light. (“Philip Roth dies at 85,” May 24). He forbade any Jewish rituals at his funeral.
So, bravo, Leon Uris. Goodbye, Philip Roth.
DR. JAN SOKOLOVSKY
Jerusalem