Whose welfare?

MAY 19, 2016 22:29

Letters (photo credit: REUTERS) — Letters

(photo credit: REUTERS)

Whose welfare?

Reading “Likud minister suspected of insider trading” (May 18), it is ironic to note that the person in question is the welfare and social services minister.

Which begs the question: Whose welfare does he represent? Not mine, not yours.

CECIL WEINER

Rehovot

Defeatist garbage

In “Ya’alon: We will use precision capabilities to damage enemy” (May 18), you quote our defense minister as saying that “between wars, we will exploit these capabilities to harm the build up of force among the elements around us and to continue to sharpen our deterrence, on the basis of responding to every provocation.” He adds that the message will be that “it is not advisable to get involved with us, and in these incidents, we exact a price that will strengthen deterrence and push back the next war.”

This defeatist garbage must not be tolerated. It tells us Moshe Ya’alon is unfit to be in charge of security. He talks of “between wars” and pushing back the next war. He accepts that we have given up on winning, that the wars can never be brought to an end and that we must continue to accept that being murdered by our enemies is something we will always have to live/ die with.

As for broadcasting a message, it in fact does exactly the opposite. It tells our enemies that no matter what they do, this government, with its lack of resolve and courage, will never do more than respond to every provocation.

PHYLLIS STERN

Netanya

Free speech in IDF

With regard to “Netanyahu, Ya’alon say rift over IDF comments settled” (May 17), Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon would want our IDF officers to speak their minds, even if they differ with the government’s opinion.

He has opened a Pandora’s box. What would he say if a kippa-wearing officer (and their number increases yearly) opines that the IDF won a battle thanks to God? Such a religious view is never expressed by any Israeli government. Are such outlandish, atavistic, opinions also acceptable to Ya’alon?

AVIGDOR BONCHEK

Jerusalem

Mysterious stats

In “The disintegration of Israeli society” (Comment & Features, May 18), Prof. Oz Almog starts by mentioning the many polls and surveys done lately that show Israeli society is “at the very apex of the identity scale.” Yet he disregards all of them and would have us believe that Israeli society is disintegrating from a single fact: more than 30 percent of Israel’s national-religious population chooses to watch Channel 20. Prof. Almog calls this statistic “alarming.”

Our neighbors, who are not national-religious and live right here in middle- class Haifa, watch Channel 20 because it is less negative and repetitive than channels 1, 2 or 10. Does this fact make Prof. Almog less alarmed? Does it alarm him that most people in Haifa prefer to watch the Maccabi Haifa soccer team rather than Beitar Jerusalem? Why shouldn’t people watch the channel that most interests them? And in what way could this possibly indicate that Israeli society is disintegrating? Then there are the statistics themselves. So we ask: Is 30% more or less than the proportion of other types of Israelis who prefer to watch Channel 20? How many people were surveyed? Ten? One hundred? One thousand? What is the margin of error of the survey? Is this value significant? Basing a claim that our society is disintegrating on this one statistic is like saying that Israel’s young people are less patriotic because fewer of them wear sandals than their parents did.

DIANA BARSHAW

DONALD RICH

Haifa