July 23: Renewing the talks

Under normal circumstances I would be very excited about the resumption of talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

By JERUSALEM POST READERS
Letters 370 (photo credit: REUTERS/Handout )
Letters 370
(photo credit: REUTERS/Handout )
Renewing the talks
Sir, – Under normal circumstances I would be very excited about the resumption of talks between Israel and the Palestinians (“Kerry succeeds in bringing Israel and Palestinians back to the table,” July 21).
However, I have been living in this country since 1969 and have seen this movie played over and over. The film is called “Great Expectations and No Results.” It ends with the Israelis and the Palestinians killing each other.
PAUL BERMAN Shoham
Sir, – Then-prime minister Ariel Sharon insisted that the sacrifice of Gush Katif was justified since in return the US guaranteed that Israel could remain in Judea and Samaria. This promise has been forgotten.
It is just one more broken promise, just like the promises made in San Remo in 1920, when the League of Nations gave Britain the mandate to create a Jewish homeland. Britain immediately modified the mandate and gave the east bank to a Beduin tribe from the Arabian Peninsula.
CHARLES OREN Givatayim
Sir, – Word is that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has agreed to release murderous Palestinian prisoners and start negotiations from the pre-’67 lines – something he said he wouldn’t do.
Here we go again. We voted for Rabin and got Peres. We voted for Sharon and got Mitzna.
We voted for Netanyahu and got Zehava Gal-on.
Can we be blamed for being jealous of our Egyptian neighbors’ style of democracy? Vote for your choice, and if he doesn’t do what he promised, throw him out.
Let’s have a little Jewish Spring here.
AVIGDOR BONCHEK Jerusalem
Sir, – Let me understand this – Arabs who murder Jews will be released (once again). How about Jews who murder Arabs? To not release Jews convicted of an identical crime is blatantly anti-Semitic and anti-democratic.
How about Jews who murder Jews? Why should their crime result in continued incarceration while an Arab who commits the exact same offense goes free? How about Arabs who murder Arabs? Continued imprisonment is overtly racist and discriminatory! And what about Arabs who rape Jews? Is rape somehow a worse crime than murder? Rapists will now say, “If only I had murdered that Jew....”
STEVE BERGER Ramat Gan
Sir, – Further to ”Bayit Yehudi opposition to ‘67 lines paid off, says Bennett” (July 21), I think we should welcome the negotiations to be based on the situation as at the status quo ante, the pre-1967 armistice lines, as long as it is between the parties to this armistice (i.e., Israel, Jordan and Egypt).
The Palestinian Authority was not a party to the agreement, as it did not exist at the time.
As far as I recollect, the Jordanians and Egyptians later repudiated their rights to the land they had occupied after 1949, leaving Israel as the sole negotiator on one side, and a vacuum on the other. We are now having to negotiate with this vacuum.
Should be a piece of cake.
ARIEL BROCH Shadmot Mehola
Sir, – In “PA holds military funeral for former Fatah terrorist who murdered 14, injured 60” (July 18), Post reporter Khaled Abu Toameh describes how Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas took the opportunity to extol the virtues of Ahmed Abu al-Sukkar, who had devoted years to the Palestinian cause.
Tempted as I was to react immediately to praise for a cold-blooded monster who planted a bomb in the middle of Jerusalem’s busy Zion Square in 1975, I held myself in check with the day’s news that US Secretary of State John Kerry might have accomplished a breakthrough for possible peace negotiations.
Unfortunately, a leopard’s spots don’t really change, and it seems that a real desire for peace has once again flown out Abbas’s window.
NAOMI FEINSTEIN Nordiya
Sir, – Just three months ago, in a letter to the editor, I criticized Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for not requiring the release of Jonathan Pollard before giving in to American pressure to apologize to Turkey (“Magic words,” April 17). The last sentence in that letter was: “Let’s hope we do not pass up another opportunity.”
Well, Mr. Prime Minister, you have missed again. Pollard’s release again has not been made a condition for the planned release of what International Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz called “heavyweight prisoners.”
LEONARD KAHN Zichron Ya’acov
Off-track excursion
Sir, – The piece “To Ramallah and back” (Comment & Features, July 21), by US college student Mollie Adatto, was like a breath of fresh air.
Written in the context of an excursion to Ramallah organized by the dovish American Jewish lobbying group J Street, this young woman easily saw through the disingenuous agenda designed to arouse support and sympathy for Palestinians and displeasure – to say the least – with Israel and its government.
She also recognized the superficiality of her student traveling companions, who were taken in by the diatribes against Israel while not noticing the absence of real, loyal Israeli representation – something that made the trip a propaganda event.
Apart from a review of the day’s events, the writer, whether intentionally or not, also exposed the dishonesty so typical of groups – Jewish and otherwise – such as J Street, and of the people they hire to address participants at their events. It seems that everyone who spoke to the young people omitted certain facts that were highly relevant.
They all engaged in half-truths.
J Street and other groups like it need to be told they are dishonest and dishonorable, and that in the long run they help no one – Jew or Arab.
RALPH DOBRIN Jerusalem
Sir, – If there are people out there who still think J Street is pro-Israel, they should read “To Ramallah and back.” These US students were shown only the Palestinian and UN points of view and propaganda.
With friends like J Street, we don't need enemies.
KURT SIMON Jerusalem
No Brotherhood they
Sir, – In his latest column (“Square-tocracy,” Savir’s Corner, July 19), Uri Savir attempts to equate certain elements of Israeli society with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
He singles out Naftali Bennett and his “powerful settler friends” (presumably meaning fellow members of his Bayit Yehudi party), accusing them of sharing deposed Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi’s belief in being “representatives of the Almighty’s will on earth” and that the rest of us – referred to as “infidels” – are being forced to “follow their messianic belief in a Greater Israel.”
I will believe this if Savir can come up with one verifiable incident in which someone in Bayit Yehudi stated anything along the lines of “We represent God and you must follow us.” The writer provides nothing of the sort.
Another reason Bennett’s party is not a “Jewish Brotherhood”: The Muslim Brotherhood seeks to turn Shari’a law into state law in Egypt, thus forcing all Egyptians – Sunni, Shi’ite or non-Muslim – to abide by it. Bayit Yehudi has never said it would seek to turn Halacha into the writer’s precious “law of the land” in Israel.
Bayit Yehudi is not a fanatic, long-knife-carrying, home-grown Muslim Brotherhood. It is, instead, living up to the mission its name states: protecting and developing Israel as the eternal home of the Jewish people.
YONATAN ALEXANDER Efrat