October 8: Still no proof

The result of the rapid mea culpas by Israelis is what led to a severe uptick in Arab-on-Jew violence that has not yet abated.

By LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Letters (photo credit: REUTERS)
Letters
(photo credit: REUTERS)
Still no proof
I was shocked by the editing of Yossi Melman’s “Intifada or not, the West Bank is on fire” (Analysis, October 6). He writes about “Jewish extremists” and what would happen if they were to “carry out another terror attack like the murder of the Dawabshe family in Duma.”
How can your editors let that go to print? There is lots of evidence that the attack was the result of internecine strife. The result of the rapid mea culpas by Israelis is what led to a severe uptick in Arab-on-Jew violence that has not yet abated.
Israeli authorities have spared no effort or expense to pin that crime on Jews, including baseless orders for administrative detention, yet there is still no evidence linking Jews to the crime.
A retraction by Melman and an apology to the Jewish people by The Jerusalem Post are in order.
DONI ZIVOTOFSKY, Jerusalem
Implacable hatred
Reading how the mother of Aharon Banita’s widow Adel said her wounded daughter had “tried to run away with a knife in her neck,” but Arab bystanders mocked her and said, “Hopefully, you’ll die, too” (“‘You loved everyone and everyone loved you,’” October 6), I was reminded of part of the oral history of my family.
My grandfather was born in Jerusalem in 1884. One of his earliest memories was walking with his father to heder (school) when he was about five years old. They were walking through the shuk (outdoor market) when a gang of older boys started to hit him.
My great-grandfather told the bullies to leave the child alone and “hit me instead.” The boys were happy to oblige. They knocked him down and cut off his beard. My great grandfather then shouted to the shopkeepers – in whose stores he shopped almost every day! – and asked them to call the ruffians off. The shopkeepers just laughed.
This implacable hatred has been going on for more than a hundred years, passed from generation to generation. It certainly has nothing to do with “the settlements.”
Anyone who thinks we will have peace by giving away pieces of our land is, in Adel Banita’s words, “an idiot.”
THELMA JACOBSON, Petah Tikva
Recognizing the truth
Your editorial “Reacting to Terrorism” (October 6) woke me up to recognize a reality – Israel and the West are destined to be defeated by Islamofacism.
After a century of attacks by Arabs, where their announced aim has been to wipe us out (and they mean it), pundits have made a good suggestion: We should stop the cycle of violence and our leaders should talk to them. After all, Western leaders talked with Nazis. Eventually, though, these leaders came to realize that talking was the problem, and not the solution.
It is sad to see Israelis who cannot face the fact that we are in a life and death struggle. If we do not believe in our right to live in peace and are not willing to fight for it, our fate is sealed.
When we recognize what Winston Churchill recognized, and act to eliminate our oppressors, we will continue the “cycle of violence” until our enemies are simply strong enough to eliminate us.
PHILIP BRIEFF, Jerusalem
I was very surprised to read your editorial rehashing what you called the “cycle of violence.”
It implies that we’re simply stuck in a tit-for-tat, with lethal consequences.
Let’s be honest: The lethal violence would stop if Palestinian youths went to school, and not to the roads to murder people with rocks and other lethal weapons.
BARRY LYNN, Efrat
Makes no sense
Glenn Field’s suggestion about Arab-Israelis (“The Arab-Israelis and their potential role as the conflict’s true mediator,” Comment & Features, October 6) makes no sense whatsoever.
Arab members of Knesset show little loyalty to the State of Israel and are not trusted by the majority MKs and citizens.
Moreover, the agitation of groups like the northern branch of the Islamic Movement has done much to aggravate the conflict, not simply between Jews and Arabs within Israel, but between Israel and the wider Arab and Islamic worlds.
The conflict’s real need is not a mediator, but a transformation of Palestinian attitudes toward acceptance of a Jewish-majority state in the Middle East. Unfortunately, at the moment this looks like a task more for a Messiah than for a mediator.
SHALOM FREEDMAN, Jerusalem
Coffee and facts
Longtime reader James Adler (“Unreported news,” Letters, October 6) has found “important stories reported by other major Israeli news organizations” that he claims “did not appear in the Post.” He also claims that “apartheid” is the “current reality in the West Bank.”
How so? When was Mr. Adler last here to personally verify unproven accusations against us? For the umpteenth time, I invite him to join us and neighborly Arab co-owners in our building for cake, coffee and fact-checking.
ESTER ZEITLIN, Jerusalem
All about greed
After reading about how, if or when Israel will see the promised billions from the new gas fields off our coast (“How Leviathan turned into an antitrust headache,” Business & Finance, October 4), I noticed in the From Our Archives section on the facing page that 65 years ago, prime minister David Ben-Gurion, in a radio address, sought to coax merchants to return concealed stocks to their shelves to help fight the pervasive black market in scarce consumer goods.
Then, as now, it seems that short-sighted people with greed in their hearts made it difficult for the public good because they wanted what they considered their fair share – if not more – of what we had.
In spite of the most serious and threatening problems we face today here in Israel, we have an abundance, and in some ways an over-abundance, that is unparalleled in Jewish history.
What we have, no doubt, would boggle the mind of my refugee grandmother from Austria who, in 1950, schlepped her kosher butcher to have him slaughter a chicken, which she proceeded to turn into the centerpiece of the most delicious meal her awestruck grandson would eat.
So rather than hold out for everything we think we can get, perhaps we ought to grasp not only what we have, but what we need, as well as what we want for those who follow us, and to do so without being greedy.
MARC BERENBACH, Nahariya
It’s in the water
Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz (“Simhat Torah: Abundance and the joy of Torah,” Observations, October 2) fails to explain the real reason Simhat Torah is celebrated on Shmini Atzeret, and not on Shavuot, the day the Torah was received.
On Shmini Atzeret, we have just thanked God for the harvest grown with the abundance of rain of the previous year, and are now requesting another year of plentiful precipitation.
We are in such a jovial mood that we are willing to chance a bit of chutzpah and say to God: “Let’s make a deal. We will complete the reading of the Torah and immediately begin a new reading cycle; in return, we will expect of You to reciprocate with a full quota of rain for the coming season.”
Since Torah is likened to spiritual water, we’ll deal with a new cycle of spiritual water while God deals with a new cycle of the real thing.
SHMUEL SHIMSHONI, Hadera