After Boston bombings: ‘Thanks, Israel’
Do the U.C. Berkeley students who voted for SB160 (“Jewish students react to divisive Cal divestment vote,” April 26) — especially the misguided Jewish Voice for Peace supporters — know about the Israel-Boston medical exchanges?
Boston doctors, with limited experience of urban area explosions, trained with Israeli doctors, who are unfortunately the world’s experts in “terror medicine.” Boston emergency room physicians who treated marathon victims thanked Israelis for having shared their medical expertise, and for helping upgrade Massachusetts General Hospital’s disaster responses plans.
If BDS/JVP supporters actually achieved their boycott/divest goals, there would have been no medical interchange between Israel and Boston E.R. doctors. The result: The physicians, the injured and the maimed victims would have been deprived of Israel’s decades of hard-earned, lifesaving disaster medicine experience.
BDS and JVP tout their “successes” at passing local and other anti-Israel divestment measures. BDS/JVP’s goal is to harm and ultimately destroy Israel. But in their zealous, hate-driven, anti-peace, anti-justice quest, they are willing to deprive people worldwide of Israel’s contributions in medicine, science, technology, agriculture and other fields.
June Brott | Oakland
Correcting a Warsaw Ghetto deportation figure
I want to thank j. for its important coverage of the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, the new museum in Warsaw and especially Dan Pine’s article about my father, Ben Stern, in the April 26 issue.
I would like to correct one significant, historical error in his article: In 10 weeks, they burned 300,000 Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto in Treblinka, not 10,000. My father’s mother and his little brother were two of them.
My father willed himself to survive the Shoah, if at all possible, to find his mother and little brother again. His life story is astounding at every turn, impossible and inspiring. My documentary film of his life story is in the works and I hope it will be worthy of viewers everywhere.
Charlene Yetta Stern | Berkeley
Military response to genocide
In two op-eds and the editorial in the April 5 j., the phrase “Never Again” is cited and advocated. “Never Again” means we shall not allow unjustified murders of an entire community.
The slogan “Never Again” expresses good intentions, but in the Sudan (including Darfur), Syria and North Korea, genocide has gone on for years now, and still continues.
Humanitarian actions, negotiations and sanctions have not stopped the murders. This should tell us that only military action might stop the genocide. We should try intense
airstrikes intermittently on Sudan, North Korea and Syria, concentrating on military installations, factories, nuclear facilities, homes of government officials, airports and railroads. These might stop the genocides.
At the least, there would be a price to be paid by these countries for their evil behavior.
Edward Tamler | San Mateo