October 7: Wave of violence

Our leadership must effect total war to eliminate our enemies, at minimal cost to our own life and limb.

By LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Letters (photo credit: REUTERS)
Letters
(photo credit: REUTERS)
Wave of violence
With regard to “Netanyahu: Our so-called peace partners must fight terrorism” (October 4), we are certainly not “fighting a war on terrorism,” as our prime minister, diplomats, advocates and media lead us to believe. This is the wrong vocabulary and narrative.
Israel is fighting a war against an ideology that is no less evil than that of the Nazis, preaching the extermination of the Jewish people. Our enemies use all and every resource that they can to this end.
Our leadership must effect total war to eliminate our enemies, at minimal cost to our own life and limb. Those Arabs (and their allies) not supporting the State of Israel are to be considered legitimate targets. No half measures.
HARRY ORENSTEIN
Elazar
How many of us are sleeping well? How many of us have managed to feel the joy of the apex of our holiday season? Ten years ago, sufficient resources and manpower were allotted to uproot thousands of Jews from their homes, synagogues, study houses and cemeteries in Gush Katif. Where are the soldiers and police now to protect our people in the Old City of Jerusalem and on the roads of Judea and Samaria? Why is there not a security person on every street leading to the Western Wall? Why do we not police the roads by jeep, helicopter, camera, emergency call button, road block or whatever it takes to restore sanity? A world that doesn’t much care about the thousands and thousands of people tortured, killed and raped in countries around us is not likely to do anything about a few Jews killed in Israel. We cannot depend on US President Barack Obama, the United Nations, Europe or anyone else. We can depend only on ourselves and on our Father in heaven.
MIRIAM KOPEIKA
Beersheba
Pressing the press
In reference to “IDF removes officer for attack on foreign press” (October 2), once again, our sick sense of “justice” has put the blame on the wrong foot. I think some pertinent questions need to answered before alleging, as MK Nachman Shai does, that “some commanders do not understand the basic values of democracy – first and foremost, freedom of expression.”
When did these members of the press arrive at the scene? Did they know beforehand that the demonstration was to take place? Was this a legal demonstration – that is, was there a permit from the police? In all probability, this was not a legal demonstration. In all probability, the members of the press knew it was going to take place.
(Otherwise, how did they know to go there?) And if they did know, what was their responsibility? Their responsibility would have been to dissuade the organizers from continuing therewith and, morally, not to go there to support them. (It serves them right for standing on the wrong side of the scene!) So I have some questions of my own.
Were the members of the press questioned about how they came to the demonstration? If they knew that an illegal demonstration was to take place, what did they do about it? Did they inform the police? If not, there is much blame to be heaped on them, both legally and morally.
Maybe they were roughly treated, but maybe they were on the wrong side of the law. After all, they were in a war zone. But if they had prior knowledge of the demonstration and if they knew that it was illegal, they are therefore aiders and abettors of a criminal act, and just as guilty as the perpetrators.
I call on our police to investigate the recordings of the telephone messages of these “members of the press” and, if necessary, press charges.
LOUIS ZETLER
Hoshaya
The writer is an attorney.
Media dust up
I enjoy a good media dust up, but “Into the fray? More like ‘out of line’” (Observations, October 2) left me disappointed with Dov Lipman’s choice of not rebutting Martin Sherman’s “hate mongering,” as Lipman defines it. A wise move on his part, as he doesn’t have much to say that won’t dig himself and his mentor, Yair Lapid, deeper into their hole.
Nonetheless, Lipman does string our sympathy along by using his leader’s “asthma” as an excuse for not having served in an IDF combat unit. The points he brings up, which have little connection to the core issue, lack ethos, and the only pathos they raise is pity.
Guys, Sherman is the shaman of this sand-box. You don’t stand a chance! DANIEL ABELMAN Jerusalem I found it highly mendacious to have Dov Lipman, as close to Yair Lapid as any politician can get, admit that he has never read Martin Sherman’s Into the Fray columns yet still write a rebuttal to one of these columns. How can that happen? In light of Lipman’s response, clearly written on behalf of Lapid, may I recommend that Sherman and Lapid debate the issues at an event organized by The Jerusalem Post. It should take the format of the successful “Intelligence Squared” debates, in which an audience is invited to vote on the more convincing debater.
Post editor-in-chief Steve Linde would make the perfect moderator.
BARRY SHAW
Netanya
I found myself blinking in disbelief at how your readers were shocked (shocked!) by the adjectives employed by Martin Sherman to describe Yair Lapid (“Sherman gets personal,” Letters, September 30). Have they never read left-wing publications in which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is besmirched and accused of everything short of moral turpitude? The real importance of what Sherman wrote (and which your letter writers, as well as Dov Lipman, failed to address) was a substantial issue: What part of the Saudi peace plan would Lapid be prepared to accept? Sherman is absolutely right to juxtapose the plan with the Yesh Atid platform (which rejects all the plan’s salient points) to query what the party leader has in mind.
Ironically, Lapid was able to meet with Saudi prince Turki bin Faisal because our countries are now de facto allies. We got there without accepting any self-serving Saudi peace plan, and only because of the shared interests and threats our countries now face.
This reality shines a less-thankind light on what Lapid is doing in pontificating about a failed and moot plan. Surely, it cannot be related to political posturing and positioning? Or is that too hurtful to propose?
DOUGLAS ALTABEF
Rosh Pina
Beyond words
 I – and, I am sure, the overwhelming majority of your readers – was shocked beyond words to read Elliot J. Cosgrove refer to Pope Francis as “Holy Father” (“A model ministry,” Comment & Features, September 30), and even more shocked that your editors saw nothing amiss in printing this.
Anyone who says what Cosgrove did cannot be deemed a legitimate rabbi. The Jewish Theological Seminary, where he was ordained, should forthwith condemn him in the strongest possible terms, and revoke his smicha.
If the good “rabbi” and your editors had paid attention to their prayers during the recently concluded 10-day period of the Days of Atonement, they could not have helped but notice that Judaism recognizes only the Almighty as our “Father,” as noted in the Avinu Malkenu prayer, and not the elected head of the Roman Catholic Church.
Is Cosgrove proposing that traditional Judaism morph into something else?
HARVEY SCHWARTZ
Jerusalem