Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on October 18, 2021

Can Israel learn from New York?Regarding Needed: A civility spiral to propel Israeli-Arabs forward (October 13): I disagree with Prof. Gil Troys suggestion that Israel can learn from New York how to tackle the Israeli-Arab crime problem because it has over the years lowered its crime rate. No, anyone who reads the citys tabloids will be shocked at how violent the city still is. More to the point is that the United States and Israel have monumental problems which have no commonality. The former must confront gun violence and the racial crisis; the latter, how to integrate the recalcitrant haredi and Israeli-Arab minorities.

Even the US with all its brainpower, as reflected in the staggering number of Nobel Prizes it has won, cannot solve these problems. Much of this brilliance is associated with top universities in California, where seven of the ten Nobel laureates this year in medicine, physics, chemistry and economics were educated, affiliated with, or are now professors. Yet one is astounded by the magnitude of the homeless problem in Los Angeles where thousands of them live in plastic tents lining the sidewalks. California also has the perennial problem of huge forest fires. There is a myth that critical social and natural issues are solvable without sweat in advanced democracies.

JACOB MENDLOVICJerusalem

YIGAL HOROWITZBeersheba

My frequent flier card continues to gather dust!

SALLY SHAWKfar Saba

SARAH (ELBAUM) GOLDENBERGHaifa

Katz had already acknowledged that Jerusalem is unequivocally the Jewish capital and will remain so. Why, then, should our government have to concede something in order to protect what is rightfully ours? Most especially something that is not in our interest, as would be the case in meeting with the terror-supporting Abbas.

Consider the very different approach of law professor Eugene Kontorovich. There was an indication, he said, that the Americans were thinking of opening the consulate without the required Israeli consent, assuming Israel would just go along. Kontorovich advised:

Israel needs to spell out now that it will not accept a fait accompli. A diplomatic mission needs many things from the host government, from diplomatic visas and license plates to security coordination. If Bennett and Lapid want to deter the United States from attempting hardball tactics, they should declare now that the government will in no way recognize a new diplomatic mission opened without its consent.

How different from the left-wing perspective is this advice that Israel strand strong for her rights.

ARLENE KUSHNERJerusalem

Certain proof that even a broken clock is right twice a day: note Yaakov Katzs editorial. Yes, a US Consulate for Palestinians in Jerusalem would be a terrible political loss for Israel.

Since I have zero confidence that our over-eager-to-compromise government will handle this Biden effort to weaken us appropriately, the drama remains interesting. Perhaps it can adopt Katzs error, buried at the end of the editorial, and offer up Abu Dis proving, I guess, that Katzs broken clock is right only once a day.

CHAIM A. ABRAMOWITZJerusalem

Stantons one-sided conversation with a dead man proved to be a well-received expression of gratitude to the French people for Frances past diplomatic and military assistance to the United States.

The top-down percolation of antisemitism in Ireland from high political levels to the Irish populace at large goes beyond antithesis to Pershings graveside tribute to the deceased Lafayette. Irelands transition from a dominion of the British Empire to an independent republic was facilitated in no small part by Eamon de Valeras close personal and intellectual relationship with Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog when Herzog was chief rabbi of Ireland. Rabbi Herzog, of course, continued his service as a noted rabbi after he made aliyah to the Mandate. Rabbi Herzogs son would later serve as president of Israel, a position now occupied by Rabbi Herzogs grandson following a notable career in Israeli politics.

Yes, Ireland does have a problem a problem rooted in unbounded dissolute ingratitude!

KALMAN H. RYESKYPetah Tikva

In an ironic twist, the article clearly demonstrates the bitter-hate-filled world of Douglas Bloomfield and his twisted view of Zionism, Jewish identity and anything to do with Trump. Hold my tongue from speaking evil has not registered with Douglas Bloomfield. The article has no place in a newspaper with the reputation of The Jerusalem Post.

NEVILLE BERMANRaanana

LAWRENCE SHAPIROCalgary

Gershon Baskin treats the Palestinian Authority and Hamas as though they were The Brady Bunch. He also plays fast-and-loose with history.

He suggests the Holocaust led to the birth of Israel. It did not. It was the San Remo Accords, 1920, that created mandates for areas of the Ottoman Empire that Turkey lost in World War I. The Mandate for Palestine was held as the reconstituted homeland of the Jews. When the Mandate ended in 1948, Israel was declared.

The Nakba was not the result of Israels birth. The Nakba had been ongoing for years, propelled by Nazi war criminal, Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.

The muftis first Nakba was the slaughter of the Jews of Hebron in 1929. Another was the Yemenite village of Shiloah, founded in 1882. Arab rioters decimated Jewish life, until in August of 1938, the British evicted the survivors. Illegal Arab settlers moved in and renamed it, Silwan. In June, 1941, the mufti instigated the Farhud, murdering hundreds of Iraqi Jews in Baghdad.

All these Nakbas left the Mufti unscathed. Only when he planned to extend the Holocaust into the Middle East, in 1948, did he fail.

What Palestine would Baskin like Germany to recognize: the 1920 one that included Jordan, the UNs 1947 suggestion, the PAs demands, the American Peace to Prosperity plan, or Hamass goal of killing every Jew?

I suggest the Palestinians (created in 1964 by the KGB) should listen very carefully to the words of the Abraham Accord members.

As for occupation and settlements being in violation of international law, thats a fiction. Article 80 of the UN Charter states that nothing can negate what was promised the Jews in 1920 and ratified by the League of Nations in 1922, meaning Israel includes Judea, Samaria and Gaza, until such time as Israel decides otherwise.

LEN BENNETTOttawa

IDFs top West Bank court calls for imposing high punitive damages in Palestinian terror murder cases (October 14) explains how fruitless it is to have the Israeli court grant punitive damages when they are not paid.

There seems to be no recourse. Jewish people were murdered in Judea or Samaria and nothing can be collected. Excuses are absurd. Our government should correct this legislatively.

In the meantime I would like to suggest a turn-about-fair-play solution: The Palestinian Authority will pay (through deductions from VAT Israel passed back to them) for slaying Israeli citizens.

MARSHA ROTHJerusalem

Guess what - it is not news to anyone that a professor or almost anyone else can make more money in the US than in Israel. Too bad that Angrist wasted those precious years in Israel when he could have been given the bad news before his aliyah. But, in case he did not know this, money is not the reason we move here. You would think that by the time he reached the level of a Ph.D, he would have learned that. The challenge of living in and developing our Jewish country is a greater draw to some of us than making more money elsewhere.

By the way, if I had to be isolated on a desert island with one other person (other than my wife), I would choose the professor of literature over the professor of economics every time.

Id like to make a bet with Angrist as to which of us will have Jewish great-grandchildren. But as an attorney, Id have to advise him not to take such a bet.

BARRY D. ERNSTOFFJerusalem

Once again Herb hits the nail on the head.

After having made aliyah 11 years ago from Los Angeles as a 55-year-old then, I believed then and still believe that living here in Israel is a zchut that not everyone merits. Sure, one can make more money and afford to buy more stuff in America as I did, but you are lacking the experience of living in your own land, among your own people, only here in Israel.

As my wife, Wendy, has said many times, When you live in Israel you get a front row seat to history. Not only Jewish history, but world history.

Maybe now that Professor Angrist has won the coveted Nobel Prize and will soon join MIT as a professor there, he will change his last name from Angrist to Happiest.

NORMAN L. DEROVANMaaleh Adumim

See the rest here:
Letters to the editor October 18, 2021: Can Israel learn from New York? - The Jerusalem Post

Category: Zionism
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