AOC vs Israel: It’s a Dome deal
“Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduces amendment to halt US arms sale to Israel” (September 20) calls for Israel to be deprived of essential weaponry with which to defend itself from those wishing to destroy us. Her office spoke of 44 Palestinians killed while Israel attacked the Hamas network of terror tunnels, and of course alleged that Israel does not respect the basic human rights of the Palestinians.
Nowhere do they mention the basic human rights of Israelis to live in peace, without fear of attack. Mention is not made of the reason for the aggressive network of tunnels in the first place, that Hamas has been escalating its attacks on Israel for a decade and a half, and that its raison d’etre is to completely destroy Israel.
And what about the right of Gazan citizens and their children not to be used as human shields to deter Israel from taking out the attack sites?
AOC has been pretty quiet as of late, only showing up in a recent $35,000-a-plate Met Gala in a $30,000 dress bizarrely displaying the slogan “Tax the rich.”
She and her squad are also fully silent over the recent debacle in Afghanistan, ignoring completely the botched exit and the killing of 13 American service people by the terrorist Taliban. Also not mentioned is the botched retaliatory US raid purportedly against the terrorist group, but which we now know killed no terrorists and at least 10 innocent people, including seven children, and is now described as a “non-success.”
US President Joe Biden brags that the whole Afghanistan fiasco was a success, saying that only 10% of the Americans in Afghanistan were left behind. Where is AOC’s outrage now?
DAVID SMITHRa’anana
When Donald Trump was president, AOC ridiculously called refugee centers in Texas “concentration camps.” Now that Joe Biden is president, the crisis on the US border is many times worse, yet AOC now has nothing to say about it because the Democrats are in power.
Instead, she is unleashing her energy and rhetoric full-throttle against Israel (“Is AOC’s deplorable Iron Dome move a shift for the Democrats?” September 25), trying to deprive Israel of the ability to defend its citizens – including real concentration camp survivors and Israeli Muslims – with its miraculous (but expensive) defensive Iron Dome.”
The Arabs who recently raised a Nazi flag in a village near Hebron must surely be pleased and encouraged by the likes of “the Squad” and their supporters.
ARLENE FAUNCEBat Yam
The House Democrats, led by AOC and the virulently antisemitic progressives, voted to remove funding for the Iron Dome defensive system, thereby virtually guaranteeing the death of hundreds if not thousands of Israelis – Jews and Muslims (“House Dems remove Iron Dome funding from upcoming budget,” September 22).
This is the identical Democratic Party antisemitism led by FDR that refused to bomb the rail lines from Hungary to Auschwitz in 1944-1945, thereby guaranteeing the death of 400,000 Hungarian Jews.
From FDR to AOC, no difference.
RICHARD SHERMANMargate, Florida
There is only one reason to cut $1 billion for Israel’s Iron Dome from the government-funding bill, and that is to kill Israelis – Jews, Christians and Muslims.
While this would please antisemites inside and outside of Congress, it is incredibly short-sighted.
This past May, radical Islamic terrorists in Gaza fired more than 4,300 rockets into Israel. Regardless of whether they were sending a message to Israel, the PA or the Arab street, what would have happened if the Iron Dome had not performed adequately? What would have happened if one or more of the intercepted rockets had hit skyscrapers in Tel Aviv, or schools full of children in Beersheba or Nazareth, or the al-Aqsa Mosque?
The answer is clear; there would have been a full-scale war in Gaza, with thousands dying.
While Democratic progressives (typically, anti-American, anti-white and antisemitic) would welcome chaos in Israel, America’s only reliable partner and source of intelligence in the region, where were that party’s supposedly moderate leaders?
The American people are watching. They are not as simple-minded and politically indoctrinated as those congressmen are and the mid-terms are fast approaching.
LEN BENNETTOttawa, On.
Snark remark
Kudos to Prof. Natan Aviezer for his letter of support for Gershon Baskin (“Two states-of-the-art,” September 20).
Baskin is a follower of the Carollian School of Philosophy. This is the philosophy laid down by the renowned philosopher Lewis Caroll in his world-shaking work “The Hunting of the Snark.” To sum up this principle in Caroll’s own words, “I have said it three times so it must be true.”
DAVID STEINHARTPetah Tikva
The September 20 “Letters” section included detailed, well thought-out letters by Hadas Herman, Len Bennett, and Dr. Daniel Trigoboff taking issue with Gershon Baskin’s proposals for a two-state solution for our issues with the Palestinians. There was also an amusing spoof by Professor Natan Aviezer on the same topic.
I believe that these erudite and well-intentioned writers miss the basic issue. As a follower of Baskin’s columns for a number of years, I was under the impression that they were included in the JP in lieu of comic strips and cartoons. His ideas and proposed solutions to our problems with the Palestinians were so far-fetched and unrelated to reality that when reading them with my morning coffee they always brought a smile to my lips and enabled me to start the day in a good mood. Please continue to publish them.
JAY SHAPIROJerusalem
No force, of course
In “Silence on IDF’s excessive force a worrying trend” (September 22), Tovah Lazaroff reports on concern about IDF using excessive force in both left-wing and right-wing protests.
In the South Hebron Hills an IDF soldier pushed a left-wing activist who then fell on his face and required surgery. The combatants for “peace” did not bring stones, Molotov cocktails, burning tires or guns. The IDF soldiers were not in mortal danger at most they would have been subjected to physical and verbal attacks, the article says – although it admits that the IDF soldiers might have been subjected to physical violence.
What is the implication? Must IDF soldiers be pushed and fall on their faces before they can respond and push back? As far as bringing stones to throw, this is not necessary since the South Hebron hills are full of stones, small and large, there for the ready use of the “peace” activists.
In addition, how are the IDF soldiers to know that the protesters did not bring guns hidden in their clothing or backpacks? Will the protesters submit to full body searches before marching out to shout and wave their placards? Or must the IDF soldiers be shot – possibly mortally wounded – before they can respond?
It is all reminiscent of the recent murder of an IDF soldier by Palestinian “peace activists” who shot him point-blank through an opening in the Gaza wall. In this case the IDF did not respond at all, apparently in fear of political repercussions at the UN and the EU General Assembly and by the media.
It has got to stop.
YIGAL HOROWITZ, PHDBeersheba
Farewell to a friend
It is my unhappy task to inform you that one of your most frequent letter writers, Dr. Anthony Luder of Rosh Pina, passed away on motzei Shabbat, September 4.
Anthony was such a frequent published contributor because he was astute, articulate and analytical. He was an ardent Zionist, but was allergic to what he would call extreme manifestations of religious or political zeal.
As a pediatrician, Anthony was beloved in Rosh Pina and surrounding communities, spending years at Ziv Hospital, where he played a key role in creating the state-of-the-art Children’s Wing. He was also instrumental in helping to set up the Bar Ilan Medical School in Safed, where he served as a dean.
Ever the Brit, Anthony revered Churchill and had a “bugger up and move on” view of life. His upper lip was always stiff, except of course when it was smiling, which thankfully was often. This worldview was instrumental in his handling of his increasingly debilitating bouts with cancer.
I once thought that the Post liked printing Anthony’s letters because of the idea that there was actually intelligent life in the periphery, and there were Post readers there as well. But of course that was not it: Anthony always had something to say, and more often than not it resonated.
As someone who has become a regular op-ed contributor to the Post, I was particularly proud that Anthony’s last letter praised a piece of my own. Anglo Rosh Pina was flexing its journalistic muscles!
Anthony will be missed in these pages, but most especially in the lives of so many of us who were proud to call him our friend.
DOUGLAS ALTABEFRosh Pina
Don’t be jealous of Ellis
As a follow up to Dr. Isabel Berman’s letter in her response to “Last names changed at Ellis Island but Jews gained a safe haven” (September 19), I would relate the following story: Before making Aliyah 40 years ago, I was a CPA in Manhattan. Every month, I visited one of our clients in Chinatown. I made a point of eating in a different restaurant each time (pre-kosher days). One day I stumbled upon a restaurant in a narrow side street with the name blazing in gold eight-inch letters across the front glass window: “Moshe Goldberg’s Chinese Cuisine.”
I entered the place and immediately asked the maitre d’ if I could meet Moshe Goldberg. He pointed to a wizened Chinese gentleman sitting in the far corner. I walked across the room and asked the gentleman if he was indeed Moshe Goldberg, to which he shook his head in the affirmative.
I asked him how he received his name. He replied, “When I entered Ellis Island, the man in front of me in line was asked by the official what his name was. He replied ‘Moshe Goldberg.’ When it was my turn, I was asked the same question, to which I replied ‘Sam Ting.’”
DON SHRENSKYJerusalem
Oximeter: COVID beater
I would like to commend Dr. Sherman Rosenfeld’s article “The preventable silent deaths from COVID-19” (September 16).
Many scientific papers have been published in the last two years pointing out the insidious way that the coronavirus works on the lungs. In about 5% of people with the coronavirus, the virus eats away at the lung over a period of a week, causing severe lung disease and, in some, early death. Yet unlike the usual bacterial or viral diseases, it causes no symptoms for several days while it is destroying the lungs and only then the patient becomes critically ill, with extreme shortness of breath, severe cough, chest pain and severe palpitations. The patient will then require respiratory assistance and may die from total lung destruction.
However, if the lung disease is caught in the early stage of the disease, the severe lung damage can be stopped and most often reversed with treatment. Since the person has no symptoms during the first few days that the lung is being destroyed, one of the only ways to spot this progressive lung damage early will be with the use of a simple, inexpensive oximeter (which costs only NIS 20 to NIS 50) that measures the saturation of oxygen in the blood.
A finger is put into the oximeter, which immediately measures the percent of oxygenation in the blood. The normal level of oxygen saturation is 92% to 100%, but if it falls below 92%, this is a sign that the lung destruction has started. It will usually take a week to destroy the lung. Therefore the person must be immediately sent to an expert clinic or to the Emergency Room. If it is shown that lung disease is indeed present, treatment with oxygen, cortisone in high doses and other agents can reverse the rapid deterioration of the lung (and the patient) and prevent death or chronic lung disease – and the person will be cured.
In other words, during most of the early period the patient may feel well while his or her lungs are being rapidly destroyed. But if the condition is treated early and rapidly and aggressively, the lungs will return to normal. This is truly a race against time!
So any person with corona should monitor the blood oxygen every day with an oximeter. If they develop shortness of breath or if a low level of oxygen is found (less than 92% oxygen saturation) they must seek emergency medical care immediately.
PROF. DONALD S. SILVERBERG, MD FRCP (C) Tel Aviv University, Dept. of Medicine
Bennett drill
On the first day of Sukkot, my wife and I, our daughter and her husband were on our way to mincha at her shul in Ra’anana. We usually walk past Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s house on the way. There is extensive security outside the house, but with appropriate checking and identification the police/security let people walk through a passageway to the shul.
Before mincha – still chag – the route was blocked because some extremely noisy so-called demonstrators had decided to “protest.”
Somehow people in Israel have been misled to believe that 1) it is appropriate for anti-religious protesters to disrupt hundreds of nearby residents on the afternoon of a Holy Day and 2) screaming into a megaphone outside an individual’s private home is a legitimate form of protest.
It isn’t. It is a grotesque invasion of personal privacy. Brits know that there is a very public park in the center of London where it has been a tradition for many generations that any person who wants to can come and place his/her “soapbox” and spout and spew forth any sort of nonsense and drivel.
Israel needs such a place, whether in the park in Tel Aviv, or somewhere else, but the courts should make it clear that yelling and screaming outside a person’s home is not legitimate.
JOSEPH BERGERNetanya
Strange change
Your headline “Sarit Hadad’s coming out shows how much Israel has changed” (September 19) is indeed correct, though when, in the body of the article, you add “changed for the good,” I am afraid that I do not agree with you at all.
The change that has overcome Israeli society over the past two decades, has mimicked that of the Western world and I, for one, am not happy about it. It has always been the Jewish social norms that have kept us apart from the rest of the world and which other social groupings have slowly learned and adopted. The Jewish ritual bath gave birth to the general awareness of cleanliness and hygiene, as did the Jewish custom of washing the hands after going to the toilet, or the ritual hand-washing before meals; refraining from sexual contact prior to marriage and, yes, monogamous male with female marriages and abstinence during menstruation.
Indeed the world has changed and Israel along with it. These basic tenets of a clean and healthy society are being relentlessly eroded one by one, and this reader is not a happy bunny.
LAURENCE BECKERJerusalem