Letters to the Editor May 31, 2021: Aid charade in Gaza

Regarding “Ashkenazi heads to Cairo as Egypt pushes amid formal ceasefire push on Gaza” (May 29), potential aid donors have justified fears of another outbreak of violence between Hamas and Israel. But donors should also greatly fear that monies donated for humanitarian aid will end up enriching corrupt leaders and financing new and improved methods for attacking Israel. 

Money sources around the world are planning to expend huge sums in Gaza (i.e., to Hamas) for “rebuilding.” We here in Israel know what will be rebuilt – and it won’t be homes for the homeless.

My question is: who is funding the rebuilding/repairs of the homes/buildings in Israel damaged by Hamas rockets? Similarly, for decades the world has been financing the Arab “refugees” who voluntarily left Israel in 1948. Who has financed the Jewish true refugees forced out of Arab countries after 1948? 

Where is the justice? Oh, I forget – I am talking equality for Jews. How foolish of me.

For how long will Israel under siege from Gaza continue to supply them water, electricity, diesel, petrol, helium, LPG cooking gas, cement, rebars (for reinforced concrete), Internet, etc.? Our leaders appear to want to show we are politically correct in our actions while our enemies take this to be a sign of weakness. 

Since the Gaza border with Egypt is closed to people and material and the Israeli navy has imposed a naval blockade at sea, how are rockets transferred into Gaza other than through the Israeli-Gaza land boundary? We need a full commission of enquiry into how these offensive materials are permitted to cross our boundaries.

They use the energy supplied for their machinery to produce rockets and other projectiles and the cement and rebars to build their numerous tunnel systems under the eyes and ears of our security apparatus – are our security personnel asleep on the job?

It is time we woke up from our slumbers!

Several hundred of the rockets fired by Hamas this month did not cross the border and fell in Gaza. Since there is no warning system like “Color Red” in Gaza (and even if there were, few or none of the houses have protected areas to run to) a number of the casualties reported by Hamas and attributed to Israel must have been caused by their own rockets. 

It is important to determine the exact number, as it will detract from the Hamas effort to accuse Israel of ‘war crimes.’

The blazing honesty of Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch in “The fracturing of liberal Judaism” (May 28) is a warning and a recognition of what has happened not only in his Reform Movement but among Conservative and unaffiliated Jews as well. 

This ancient battle of Jewish Universalism and Jewish Peoplehood is going on as we speak. Jewish Universalism is the fallback position of Jews who want to drop all pretense of publicly connecting to “Jewish Distinctiveness,” as he calls it. 

Jewish Peoplehood of course includes Israel. As described by Mordecai Kaplan, it includes history, language and land, meaning Israel. But Hirsch brutally acknowledges that by abandoning Jewish Peoplehood, they are abandoning the future of Judaism. All of our fellow Jews on the Left who claim they can be Jewish and still oppose what happens here in the Jewish state, are the best examples of this kind of self-denial. 

The courage and clarity of Hirsch’s warning puts this kind of thinking in the dustbin of history and highlights the tragic loss of American Jewish commitment to our continuity.

Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch discusses reconciling particularism and universalism in Judaism. Here’s what the Torah teaches. The very first act of Moses – the greatest prophet among Jews – was to go see the Hebrews in bondage and commiserate with their suffering (Exodus 2:11). Later, Moses rose to the defense of the seven daughters of a Midianite priest who were being harassed by shepherds when watering their flock (Exodus 2:16-17). The concern for fellow Jews before concern for non-Jews is clear here.

Similarly, all those leftist Jews, especially the organization B’tselem, who denounce Israel’s actions before non-Jews and claim that they are fulfilling Judaic ethics should know that this is a perversion of Judaism. All the prophets, even though they criticized the behavior of Jews, did it with love, and never had even the thought of going to the nations to denounce the wickedness of Jews. 

I often wonder why there is so much antisemitism in the world these days. One of the reasons is surely the biased reporting by the mainstream media. CNN and other popular news outlets, as well as major newspapers such as The New York Times, Washington Post and most print media are partially responsible. 

As I watch CNN report from Gaza all I see is a 90-year-old grandma and a four-year-old child, crying and bandaged, sitting in the rubble created by the IAF, with no mention of the Hamas attacks that provoked this action. One is left to believe that innocent Palestinians were harmed by vicious Israelis. 

This sort of fake news contributes to antisemitism. Sources that misrepresent reality should not be supported by those that do not want to see antisemitism.

David Brinn’s “When will the Palestinian people find their own voice?” (May 28) was spot on and a welcome dose of the truth.

Palestinian society – whether in the West Bank, east Jerusalem or Gaza – has remained silent about their corrupt leaders and their disastrous policies. Until they speak out against them and demand changes leading toward peaceful coexistence, Palestinians will remain imprisoned in their religious and political ghettos.

Israel and the rest of the world who contribute to them financially must concentrate on creating and supporting the means and methods to help them find their voices demanding peace and coexistence. Otherwise we will be trapped in an endless cycle of conflict.

Regarding “Malfunction at Haifa oil refinery, heavy smoke rises as excess gas burned off” (May 27), it must be convenient for the fossil fuel industry to have such a large portion of global society too tired and worried about feeding, housing and even guarding their families against COVID-19 while on a substandard income to criticize it for the global environmental damage it causes, particularly when not immediately observable. (And who needs ‘carbon sinks’ when Earth’s natural environment can be used for our carbon dumps?!) 

Mass addiction to fossil-fuel-powered single-occupant vehicles surely helps keep the average addict’s mouth shut about the planet’s greatest and still very profitable polluter, lest they feel like and/or be publicly deemed hypocrites. 

On somewhat related topic, regarding “Biden orders review of COVID origins as lab leak theory debated” (May 27), before China might be successfully externally compelled to reveal any suspected COVID-19 Wuhan lab secrets, the compelling source likely must first possess a consumer base thus trade import/export bargaining chip compatible with that of China, with its nearly 1.5 billion consumers. 

Perhaps some securely allied nations combining their resources could go without the usual bully-nation China trade/investment tether they’d prefer to sever, instead trading necessary goods and services between themselves and other interested non-allied yet non-China-bound nation economies? Maybe such an alliance has already been covertly discussed but rejected due to Chinese government strategists knowing how to ‘divide and conquer’ potential alliance nations by using door-wedge economic/political leverage custom-made for each nation?

Could it be that every country typically placing its own economic and big business bottom-line interests foremost may always be its – and therefore collectively our – Achilles’ heel to be exploited by huge-market nations like China?

Regardless, China seems to know well what it’s doing.

 

Regarding “Ireland becomes first EU member state to accuse Israel of ‘de facto annexation’” (May 27), it was disappointing to read the actions of the Irish parliament over Israeli building projects. This has been elevated out of proportion. It gives the PA and Hamas the impression they have to do nothing and Israel will be squeezed into submission.

Israel is the only Middle East country that shares the values of the Western democracies, that protects all religious institutions and encourages everyone to enjoy access to their special places. Throughout the Arab world, ethnic cleansing continues. Christians, Bahai and others are persecuted. Women and gays live in peril. Surely building homes in a disputed area of our homeland is a minor issue when compared to the oppression practiced by all of Israel’s neighbors.

Had the PA accepted generous Israeli peace offers such as Camp David in 2000, there would today be an independent Palestine in the West Bank and Gaza. Instead, Arafat unleashed suicide terrorists. Had the Arabs developed Gaza when all Israelis were removed in 2005 instead of trashing everything and allowing a Hamas takeover, they would have had a head start toward statehood.

Do many in Ireland believe the PA and Hamas are actually interested in living in peace alongside Israel? Are the Arabs only biding their time, expecting the US or EU to do what they have been unable to accomplish in 70 years of war and terrorism?

While Ireland and Israel differ on minor issues, the core values of both are the same. Do not lose perspective.

John Ratcliffe’s “Ex-US intel chief to ‘Post’: Biden is surrendering to Iran” (May 27), got it exactly right in decrying the Biden-Harris administration’s foolish obsession with empowering Iran. What makes this obsession particularly pathological is that it ignores recent history in service of a discredited ideology.

Ratcliffe rightly observed that the Trump administration’s overturning of previous orthodoxies about the Middle East led to very positive results, including the Abraham Accords and the hollowing out of Iranian financial and logistical support for its terrorism proxies. The assassination of Iranian terror chief Qasem Soleimani weakened Iran’s terrorism apparatus. In addition, the Palestinian Arabs were getting the message that they no longer possessed a veto over progress in the region, a message that in time could have produced a sea change in their culture of rejection and revenge. All of these positive results were contrary to the predictions of the “peace process” industry and the de facto Iran lobby led by former Secretary of State John Kerry, and current Iran negotiators including Rob Malley.

But suffused with a determination to undo anything done by Trump, and slavishly devoted to the failed ideology and policies of the Obama administration, Biden appears determined to return to an approach empowering Iran and the Palestinian Arab rejectionists. Predictably this has already produced increased Hamas terrorism, and maximalist Iranian demands in the Vienna negotiations to reanimate (in the Frankensteinian sense) the JCPOA. Imagine how much death, destruction, and bloodshed can result from an Iran with sanctions lifted and assets unfrozen, and from Palestinian Arab terrorists flush with US cash in violation of the Taylor Force Act.

It’s always dangerous to ignore reality and act instead according to wishful thinking; in the Middle East, it’s often fatal. Israel, the Middle East, and the world at large are at risk to pay a very high price for Biden’s foolish ideology and anti-Trump agenda.

Once again we hear the voice of sense, reason and justice in Gershon Baskin’s latest column (“Time for some hardcore realism,” May 27). I am proud that The Jerusalem Post prints his opinions. 

How blind can people/nations be to history when they too have suffered in the very recent past from power-hungry, maniacal individuals? How much do people care or want to work toward a safe piece of land in which their children – Israeli or Palestinian – can grow up without fear and hate? In the name of the same God of Abraham for the Jew, the Christian and the Moslem, the killing and repeated warfare must stop. 

The one God of three religions, three peoples, cannot be speaking with a different voice to each! That is a ridiculous concept not worthy of any intelligent, civilized persons. As Baskin says, in repeated warfare there are no victors and certainly no solutions that can benefit all those human beings who inhabit and will continue to inhabit the area of Israel, Gaza and the Palestinian diaspora. 

Modern warfare and its disgusting weapon technology used to kill, maim and destroy the soul of any human being cannot be vindicated by any man’s God. Its blind, uncaring use to destroy fellow human beings, no matter what race, creed or color, anywhere in the world, is indefensible and can receive no godly sanction, except from the zealot, fanatic and the self-seeking. In my view, land is God’s territory, just as the sea and sky and no man has a right to make claims to any of it. Such claims across history for whatever reason are written endlessly in pools of blood, misery and hopelessness. 

In this Israeli-Palestinian context, wise men of our breed, Arab and Jew, need to meet, to talk, to co-operate, to compromise, to share, to give, to learn to be kind and to live in peace – the real desire of any human being during our brief and transient time on this earth. It is up to you and me to make it happen.

I share Ruthie Blum’s surprise (“Did UNRWA’s Gaza director lose the plot?” May 28) at UNRWA director Matthias Shmale’s spectacularly bad judgment – to stray from the Hamas propaganda line and for once actually tell the truth.

How dare he disclose that 1) “there is no acute or serious shortage of medical supplies, food or water” in Gaza and 2) that Israel’s strikes on Hamas military targets were precise and by and large “didn’t hit... civilian targets.”

Telling the truth in Gaza is hazardous to one’s career and life. One can only imagine the pressure on him that led to his hasty retraction/clarification. 

Reminds me of NYC mayoral candidate Andrew Yang who last month tweeted “I’m standing with the people of Israel who are coming under bombardment attacks, and condemn the Hamas terrorists.” Immediately hounded for saying something so blatantly human and not anti-Israel, he was forced to walk it back.