Will Bibi be helping us vote for president?
Seeing Benjamin Netanyahu warmly shaking hands with U.S. presidential candidate Mike Huckabee (“Israel ranks as top priority for evangelical voters,” Sept. 25) leads me to wonder whether the prime minister will next be advising Jewish American voters as to which staunchly pro-Israel Republican to support:
The one who thinks we should build walls on the Canadian and Mexican borders? Or the one who thinks we need more justices on the Supreme Court to uphold Citizens United and overturn the Affordable Care Act? The one who thinks the government should be shut down over funding for Planned Parenthood? The one who thinks that marriage licenses should not be granted to same-sex couples? Or the one who thinks that global warming is a hoax and that creationism should be taught in public schools?
So many excellent choices, and so little time. I hope we can hear from the prime minister soon.
Charles Brummer | Mountain View
The true causes of Temple Mount violence
Your JTA article on Temple Mount violence fails to properly identify the real spark, which was Arab harassment of visitors to the holy site, and the article then proceeds to portray the mainstream “cycle of violence” analysis (“What is driving the spike of violence in Jerusalem?” Sept. 25).
Your timetable starts with “Unrest followed Israel’s barring of a violent Palestinian group.” Though you do correctly identify the Palestinian group Murabitat as violent, you mention Israeli action first, while in fact, the group’s violent harassment preceded that action. Israel’s barring of this group was a response to, and not the cause of, the current unrest. The violence by Murabitat was the action that undermined the status quo. Your second item in the timetable is described as “clashes between Israeli police and Palestinian protesters.” The phrase “clashes between” portrays both sides as equally responsible. In fact, it is the job of the police to quell riots, which are the provocative act in this situation.
I hope that J. will be more careful in the future to distinguish “cause” from “effect.”
Dan Fendel | Piedmont
VW’s gaseous emissions are an eerie echo
At the death camps, the Nazis ordered newly arrived Jews into large rooms to take their showers. Instead, the Nazis threw in canisters of Zyklon B gas. Within a few minutes, all Jews were dead. Deception, gaseous emissions, mass murder.
To compare the present Volkwagen scandal to the Holocaust would be a horrible trivialization of the Holocaust. And yet there appears to be an eerie echo. Americans were deceived to believe that VW complied with the U.S. gas emissions standards. Instead, VW emitted nitrogen oxide at 40 times the amount permitted. However, when tested (and only when tested), the VW’s software kicked in and shut down its nitrogen oxide production and was able to pass muster. Nitrogen oxide can cause emphysema and bronchitis. It can shorten your life expectancy, which, as it robs years off your life, is a form of murder.
You’d think that the German engineering elite at VW, with lingering German history in their wake, would have given pause to their fraud and their spewing forth of gaseous emissions onto the American landscape.
Gerald Gerash | Walnut Creek
‘Go back to Russia’?
Regarding the news brief “Big Jewish presence at ‘Stop Iran Rally’ in S.F.” (Sept. 4), an online comment by “DavidF” proposes that Jews “either support our government and its policies or go back to Russia.”
I came to this country in 1979 from the Soviet Union (the part that is now Ukraine). I became a U.S. citizen in July 1986. I pledged my “allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands.” There was no requirement to support the American government and its policies.
Where does DavidF hail from? China? North Korea? Or the liberal Bay Area?
Anastasia Glikshtern | San Francisco
Jewish students at U.C.are treated differently
Apparently, the office of U.C. President Janet Napolitano has become concerned more with preserving the rights to free speech, however hateful it may be, than with the unalienable rights and pursuit of happiness for students on U.C. campuses (“U.C. regents reject ‘insulting’ intolerance statement,” Sept. 25).
In tune with this approach, Will Creeley, vice president of legal and public advocacy for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, laments that students’ calls for disciplinary actions against hate speech is “a first step toward a slippery slope of punishment for speech that institutions don’t like.” How about a slippery slope of turning a blind eye toward basic human rights to dignity and self-respect, which are systematically denied to Jewish students?
The U.C. administration’s “Statement of Principles Against Intolerance” readily discusses “all forms of bigotry and hatred,” while only Jewish students are endlessly subjected to all sorts of vilification and slander. No other ethnic or racial group has experienced similar defamation month after month and year after year.
Hopefully, the “working group” assembled in response to the statement will formulate clear principles of fighting anti-Semitism on campuses, not only for the sake of the Jewish students, but also for the spirit of tolerance and compromise, which used to be hallmarks of American higher education.
Vladimir Kaplan | San Mateo
Questionable moral stance
Yonkel Goldstein said “the Irgun and Lehi were rejected by the mainstream Jewish political establishment” (Letters, Sept. 18). Initially true, maybe, but not later.
From November 1945 through August 1946, the Haganah and the Jewish political establishment joined forces with the Irgun and Lehi to wage war against the British for political independence in Israel. During this time of unity, the bombing of the King David Hotel occurred. If they were “rejected” by the establishment, why did they join forces with them in battle? Read “The Revolt” by Menachem Begin for more details.
Furthermore, he said, “when engaging in morally questionable acts such as expelling Arabs, there was at least a rationale … Thus, the forcible removal of some Arab population centers may have been essential.” If those same situations were to occur today, would he support the removal of some Arab population centers by the Netanyahu government?
He said, “Furthermore, there are always atrocities in war, and the Israeli wars were no exception.” Was the removal of some Arab population centers an atrocity, or essential and justified for survival? Which is it?
Neal Wohlmuth | San Francisco