Skewed contribution
Regarding “Ambassador Greenfield to UNSC: ‘Only through diplomacy can we push deal forward’” (March 26), not many like to remember that in a previous deal, we released 1,027 prisoners – among them were 280 serving life sentences – for one hostage, Gilad Schalit.
Oh yes, and among those was a chap named Yahya Sinwar. Surely you haven’t forgotten him. That should definitely put to bed the fake fact that eventually we will be able to recapture them all or be able to eliminate them in some other way.
We know that we live in a very dangerous neighborhood, but our own skewed contribution to it doesn’t help.
STEPHEN VISHNICK
Tel Aviv
The emasculated US abstention on the UN ceasefire resolution which enables Hamas to rearm, rebuild and recruit, as it has promised, to perpetuate October 7s until every Jew on earth is murdered demonstrates that the Biden administration would have called for a ceasefire on December 8, 1941.
The abstention makes clear that President Biden and Secretary of State Blinken devoutly wish to appease the evil that October 7 represents just as they would have appeased the evil that December 7, 1941 represents.
FDR and Harry Truman understood how evil is destroyed; not with chiffon-like ceasefires, but with bullets and bombs. There is not a scintilla of FDR and Harry Truman in any member of the Biden administration. Appeasing the architects of October 7 a la Neville Chamberlain, so that the Biden administration can curry favor with the Michigan supporters of October 7, is no different than appeasing the architects of Pearl Harbor.
RICHARD SHERMAN
Margate, Florida
Not befitting anyone
A return of Donald Trump as president of the United States will certainly be bad for America, Israel, and the Jewish people. One need look no further than Trump’s statement about Jews: “Any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion, they hate everything about Israel, and they should be ashamed of themselves.” A statement like that is not befitting anyone, especially someone who is running for US president.
Amotz Asa-El’s “Will Trump be good for the Jews?” and Tova Herzl’s “The ramifications of voting for Trump” (both, March 22) should wake up Jews and Americans now before November and remind all of us what the next four years will look like if Trump is elected.
He is a narcissistic man who has leveled demeaning criticism at anyone and anything that does not agree with him. He ignited the Capitol riots and relentlessly tried to overturn Biden’s election. He is a disaster waiting to happen, again.
I was still living in the US at the time that Joe Biden was elected president in 2020. He won the presidency, in part, because enough Americans, including myself, had enough of Donald Trump’s hateful rhetoric and divisiveness.
Trump’s statements now about Jews demonstrates that he has not changed his views regarding people in general, whether it’s Jews, immigrants, or white supremacists. As Tova Herzl so eloquently called it, “the renaissance of isolationist discourse” has already resurfaced with Trump’s re-election bid.
There is still time to rethink what the next fours years will be like for America and Israel. In Judaism, the term for Trump’s offensive speech is lashon hara, disparaging and degrading words toward another human being. Will we have four more years of that? I hope and pray otherwise.
GERSHON LEVITAN
Beit Shemesh
Always interesting
At the risk of repeating myself, I wish to congratulate Greer Fay Cashman for her thrice weekly news items that are sometimes sad and sometimes amusing, but always interesting. Long may she continue to write for The Jerusalem Post and long may I continue to read them.
BRENDA GOLDBLUM
Jerusalem
Demography is destiny
Regarding “Who really cares about Canada?” (March 26): To understand why Canada is halting arms sales to Israel, one has to understand the fact that demography is destiny. Years ago, Jews were the largest non-Christian minority in Canada; today, while there are some 350,000 Jews, there are 1.8 million Muslims.
As Canada is set to take in 500,000 immigrants in each of the coming years, Muslims will be a major portion of them. Now, there are more parliamentary constituencies where Muslims are influential than those where Jews bear influence.
There are other factors driving Canada’s policy on Israel such as the growing hostility by non-Muslims toward Israel. About a thousand anti-Zionist Jews, mainly represented by Independent Jewish Voices – the counterpart to Jewish Voice for Peace in the US – are working overtime to demonize Israel among the masses in demonstrations and petitions.
Here in Toronto, where about half of Canada’s Jews live, since a hugely disproportionate number of university buildings are named after Jewish funders, one would think that students would be grateful. Yet instead of appreciating the good that someone does for you, a fundamental Judaic ethic, anti-Zionism dominates the campuses.
Similarly, Jewish philanthropists are major donors to local hospitals and public institutions. No good deed goes unpunished.
JACOB MENDLOVIC
Toronto
Rewarded for murder
Nadav Tamir (“‘Faithful are the wounds of a friend,’” March 25) and Senator Chuck Schumer are blaming everyone but the true culprits in the interminable conflict between the Palestinians and Israel. I refer, of course, to the Arab and Palestinian leaders who turned down every Israeli and US proposal that should have led to the establishment of the first-ever-to-exist Arab state of Palestine. The problem, of course, is that all the proposed solutions required that the new state would be Israel’s neighbor, not its replacement.
Whether you love or hate Prime Minister Netanyahu, his solution is the only one that would bring peace and a decent life for the Palestinians suffering under the (mis)rule of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. Hamas must be defeated. Gaza must be demilitarized. The Palestinians, who have been fed four generations of anti-Jewish rhetoric and who have grown up seeing Palestinians honored and rewarded for murdering Jews, must be deradicalized.
It will be a long road, but it’s the only way for the Palestinians to get a state of their own, one that will not be a terror state, unlike the one Hamas created in Gaza after Israel afforded the Palestinians who live there an opportunity to live under the administration of leaders of their own choosing.
TOBY F. BLOCK
Atlanta
Only to appease
Rabbi Pesach Wolicki (“Mordecai and Chuck,” March 20) tries to make a comparison between the Mordecai of the Book of Esther and US Senator Schumer, using the term “court jew.” In his wonderful book The Dawn: Political Teachings of the Book of Esther, Yoram Hazony demonstrates that Mordecai was quite the opposite.
The court Jew, as epitomized by Schumer, is essentially a person who thinks he has achieved a high position but in fact is a prisoner. He is there only to appease and be subservient to his masters, and has no freedom to do or say anything against his masters’ wishes.
Mordecai stood independently against the king’s favorite, Haman, and in the key passage of 4:14, he tells Esther – who until then had been an appeaser of the king, not even revealing that she was Jewish – that she too has to take a firm stand to save the Jewish nation.
Schumer has earned the scorn of Jews all over the world for his obsequious pandering to the anti-Netanyahu Obama-Biden administration. He represents the worst of what historically the term “court Jew” has signified.
JOSEPH BERGER
Netanya