Letters to the Editor June 9, 2021: Jerusalem march: Cancel culture

“Police order cancellation of Jerusalem flag march” (June 8), makes me hang my head in shame and degradation that our formerly proud country has knelt before the empty threats of an internationally recognized terror organization.

Where is our national pride?

Oh for the days of Trumpeldor, Yair Stern, Yitzhak Rabin (yes Rabin!), Menachem Begin – all our illustrious giants who fought to the end for Jewish liberty, freedom and sovereignty over our country.

First the Temple Mount, next the Old City, then Shimon Hatzadik/Sheikh Jarrah and more soon to come. What will our “brave” government and chiefs of police do when confronted with a demand from Hamas that unless all Jews are removed from the Western Wall (of al Aqsa) they will start shelling us again and rampaging in the mixed population cities of our country? I shudder to think.

No one has the right to tell us what we can and can’t do in our land, and certainly not in the capital and Eternal City of Jerusalem.

One can only hope that similar consideration will be shown to those who oppose “Nakba” demonstrations.

In another surrender to our enemies, the annual solidarity march in support of our historic capital Jerusalem was canceled. Having just successfully concluded its latest war against us, Hamas issued a warning against allowing the postponed and rescheduled Jerusalem Day flag march in the Old City to take place. 

Hamas leader Muhammad Hamada threatened to “call on our people to hold mass protests at al Aqsa Mosque on Thursday” while Hamas leader in Gaza Yahya Sinwar swore to “burn Israel to the ground” if al Aqsa is “threatened” again. The Islamic Jihad Movement called the march a “hostile action against the Palestinian people and the Palestinian land.” 

They threaten and we run like scared rabbits – the latest being the IDF and police told not to wear their uniforms where there is unrest with the Arabs so as not to inflame tensions. Pretty pathetic in what is supposed to be the Jewish Land for the Jewish People. 

Whoever controls the Temple Mount controls the Land and Netanyahu has made sure it is not Israel. In any war, there must be only one side left standing and unfortunately we have not had the leadership to make that happen.

Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar tries to denigrate Israel by saying that we are “weaker than a spider’s home” (“Sinwar: Next war will change the Middle East,” June 6). Given that spider silk is actually, pound for pound, five times stronger than steel, I think we should take this as a compliment, a la the prophet Bil’am being hired to curse the Children of Israel but ending up blessing them instead.

Regarding “Attack tunnel found under UNRWA school in Gaza” (June 7), in 2015, the UN admitted that Palestinians fired rockets from several UNRWA schools. Did the recent discovery of an attack tunnel under an UNWRA school really surprise anyone?

Nothing would be more effective in ensuring worldwide condemnation of Israel than a bombed Gaza school, or even better, a photograph of dead children. 

Palestinians purposefully and cynically use children for propaganda purposes, abetted by media who fail to report fully, because that might reflect badly on the Palestinian national enterprise, and you never know what Palestinians might do if you offend them.

Just as in the classic film Casablanca, Louis (Claude Rains) is “shocked, shocked” to find out gambling is going on at “Rick’s,” UNRWA is “shocked, shocked” to find out Hamas has built tunnels of death under its schools.

Just as viewers all saw the wink of Claude Rains, everyone sees the wink of UNRWA.

So let me get this straight. It’s okay for UNRWA schools to 1) educate Arab children to revile and violently attack Israel, 2) serve as storehouses for Hamas weapons and 3) provide above-ground cover for terror tunnels. 

What’s not okay is for UNRWA officials to ever speak the truth – as when director Matthais Schmale recently confirmed that Israel’s defensive strikes on Hamas rocket weaponry were “precise.” He was forced to apologize and retract his words for the “sin” of botching an opportunity to lie to demonize Israel. His career is probably finished. Is anyone checking up on his safety?

Can you imagine what might happen if UNRWA schools started promoting humanistic values?

On June 2 you published my letter noting that unless and until the Palestinians are educated by their teachers and preached to by their clergy to live in peace with Israel there is no hope for peace. And since the so-called experts and analysts almost never mention this basic problem there is no hope for resolution in the foreseeable future.

My observations were confirmed on June 6 in a lengthy article by Doron Tzur entitled “New Gaza.” The writer, defined as a “solution engineer” describes a fantasy world in which, among other things, “the (Arab) children would study Arabic and Hebrew and upon reaching the age of 18 swear allegiance to the covenant and become entitled to choose Israeli citizenship with full privileges and duties.”

Again, not a single word about the critical importance and influence of education and religion in the Arab attitude toward Israel. Such thinking is excellent background for movies and novels about a fictional future but is totally alienated from reality.

Allow me to congratulate Amotz Asa-El on his brilliant article “Where did he fail?” (June 4) concerning Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s downfall.

As a longtime Netanyahu supporter, I have come to the conclusion that “enough is enough” and that by remaining prime minister he is in fact causing grave damage to the state. Asa-El notes other great leaders who fell from grace owing to events beyond their control. I would like to add the great Sir Winston Churchill, who succeeded against overwhelming odds in defeating Hitler and his Nazi regime, yet was defeated in the post-war election in 1945 by Clement Atlee. How’s that for appreciation? 

Although Churchill did return to lead Britain from 1951 to 1955, I very much doubt the Netanyahu will be elected again – but stranger things have happened, especially in this country!

Tovah Lazaroff’s analysis “Bennett is just following Netanyahu when it comes to ‘abandoning’ the Right” (June 6) is right on the mark. Apparently, Bennett has learned very well from the very best there is. He’ll make a fine prime minister. Let’s hope he continues to out-perform his mentor!

Kol hakavod to Alon Ben-Meir for his article, “Charting a new course toward peace” (June 6), which argues, “An Israeli government representing the entire political spectrum offers an opportunity to gradually end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

Recognizing the great difficulties involved and the very painful compromises that would have to be made, I think that the incoming government should make every effort to resolve the conflict.

This is also the view of Commanders for Israel’s Security, which includes over 300 retired generals and leaders of Mossad and Shin Bet.

The key question, I believe, is, without a conflict resolution how Israel will avert continued violence and diplomatic criticism, effectively respond to our economic, environmental, and other domestic problems, and remain both a Jewish and a democratic nation.

Gershon Baskin (“My hopes for the next government,” June 3) has high – Everest high – hopes that the new “unity” government will solve some of our problems with the Palestinians, including Gaza. For Gaza, thousands of work permits, a joint industrial zone, solar energy fields, a water pipeline, an electricity line from Israel... in brief, a Gazan utopian Singapore on the Mediterranean. 

The thin air at the top of Everest is known to have a delusional effect on mountain climbers who need oxygen aid to retain their senses. Baskin has overlooked one aspect of the conflict on his oxygen-deprived climb to the top: the Hamas terrorists will not morph into peace-loving entrepreneurs because of Bennett/Lapid. For there to be peace with the Gazans, the Hamas terrorist leaders must be brought handcuffed, blindfolded, keffiyeh-less to Israeli courts to stand trial for the crime of firing tens of thousands of rockets at Israeli civilians with the undisguised intent to maim and kill as many innocents as possible. 

Their lack of success because of Israeli air defenses does not exonerate them. We will not forget and only after these arch terrorists are brought to justice and languish in jail, can there be hope for a better future for the Gazans. 

“Salvage a lost opportunity” (June 1) makes the point that in the recent conflict with Gaza an opportunity was lost to do more than just kick the can down the road one more time. But actually the opportunity to put an end to the seemingly eternal “Palestinian” problem has not ended. 

The recent normalization of relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates represents a continuous opportunity to do what is the absolute minimum necessary to obtain peace – namely, the overthrow of the government of Fatah in the Palestinian Authority and Hamas in Gaza.

The Mossad and the IDF gained an incisive tactical success in Gaza due to complete and detailed intelligence followed by decisive and successful action. Since the Israeli authorities roam freely throughout the PA territories, there is to believe that the Mossad’s information about the PA/Fatah is even better.

Since being driven from the West Bank under a false charge of corruption (oh, what divine hypocrisy), Mohammed Dahlan, Abbas’s nemesis, has been residing in the UAE. It should be a relatively easy task between the UAE’s wealth, the Mossad’s information and Dahlan’s own network of supporters and agents in both territories (he, himself, is from Gaza), to stage a coup d’etat in the PA and Gaza, replacing Fatah and Hamas with a Dahlan-led government, which would then make peace with Israel.

As soon as Israel can put its domestic house in order, it has the opportunity to cauterize once and for all, the open “Palestinian” sore.

Following the recent Hamas-Israel war, Thomas L. Friedman suggested that this is a ‘Kissingerian’ moment for Biden Middle East peacemaking, telling the US president, “You may not be interested in Middle East peacemaking but Middle East peacemaking is interested in you.”

But there is a major difference between the post-Yom Kippur War period of 1973 and the recent Hamas-Israel conflagration. Then it was “land for peace” but now it’s the “two-state” solution. As Omri Nahmias pointed out (“Unity government will stay away from friction with US,” June 1), the Palestinian issue “is not a conflict you can always manage; it often manages you.”

Luckily for Israel, Biden is now preoccupied with Putin and China and Henry Kissinger is no longer in power to “bleed us again” for an unviable two-state solution based on the pre-1967 “Auschwitz borders.”

MEL SHAY M.D

Jerusalem

Dr. Dalal Iriqat’s “Money might appease the Palestinian Authority but not the public,” (Jpost.com, June 7) can be summarized in a few words: Israel needs to withdraw to the pre-1967 (1948 ceasefire) lines. With improved weaponry, Israel’s enemies will have a better chance of accomplishing what they failed to do in 1967: destroy what is left of Israel and annihilate its people.

Iriqat is correct in stating that America must not go back to its old ways. We should not provide funding that will only enrich the leaders of the PA and Hamas and be used to finance their efforts to destroy Israel. Monies donated must be carefully monitored, given to the people who will actually work on projects designed to bring about the creation of an entity that will co-exist peacefully with the nation-state of the Jews.

Western nations must stop blindly accepting the Palestinian narrative. Egypt’s and Jordan’s illegal occupations of Gaza, Judea, Samaria, and eastern Jerusalem in no way laid the foundation for a Palestinian claim on those lands – the 1964 founding charter of the Palestine Liberation Organization explicitly says so. And Jordan’s ethnic cleansing of the Jews from areas under its illegal occupation, accompanied by the destruction of dozens of synagogues and desecration of countless Jewish graves, made Israel, quite correctly, eager to retain control of all of Jerusalem. Palestinian leaders deny the historicity of Jewish claims to Jerusalem and Palestinian “worshipers” hide weapons in Temple Mount mosques to attack Israeli security personnel and Jews praying at the Western Wall.

If they don’t want to see evictions from Simon Hatzadik/Sheikh Jarrah, Palestinian leaders need to change course and tell the Arabs facing eviction that the PA orders to not pay rent or accept compensation for having to move were wrong.

As a professor of conflict resolution, Iriqat should know that the people who start (and lose) wars are not generally allowed to dictate terms of peace.

Please stop using “female” as a qualifier if you wouldn’t do the same if the subject were male. This latent sexism jumped out at me twice this past week with Jerusalem Post headlines and photo captions. 

It seems odd to point out that the photo of women in a car is of female students (“Home bittersweet home,” May 28) or that the women in uniform at the Kotel are female soldiers (“The war is over. Will another be averted?” June 2). 

I cannot imagine there would have been a parallel headline if male soldiers were praying at the Kotel. This implies it’s not a given that women are students or (gasp!) soldiers. The Post should be more aware of the messages conveyed through choices of words.

Regarding “Ireland’s Delusional Orgy of Criticism of Israel” (June 1), while Alan Shatter correctly states that Taoiseach [Prime Minister] Eamon De Velara expressed his condolences in Germany’s Dublin embassy in May 1945 on Hitler’s death.” It is a fact that reveals the foundational antisemitism of Ireland. 

By May 1945 the horrors of the Holocaust were well known in Europe. To offer condolences for Hitler on behalf of the Irish people is to embrace Auschwitz, Treblinka, etc. Those “condolences for Hitler” foreshadow Ireland’s toxic hatred of the Jewish people of Israel today.

I beseech all Israeli citizens not to support a prisoner swap as was done with Gilad Schalit! Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, one of the main antagonists doing harm to Israel and its people, is talking about 1,111 Hamas members and terrorists he wants freed, basically for two citizens and two bodies!

Whilst I sincerely grieve with the families involved, the price we will pay in the end is prohibitive and will not amount to a fair deal.