Show bigots you are not afraid
Laura Einhorn’s op-ed asserting that lawfare is the wrong response to antisemitism in schools (“Antisemitism lawsuits against schools do more harm than good,” online May 18) seems based on the notion that you can talk your attacker out of killing you if you just call a neighbor and ask them to join the discussion.
Specifically, she contends that when children are called “dirty Jews or when swastikas are graffitied on school walls, these are moments to teach and to engage in restorative justice, not to sue.” My experience has taught me otherwise.
I first experienced antisemitism in a South African high school in 1967, my bar mitzvah year. I have never forgotten the jerk named Anthony who called me “Jewboy” every day instead of using my name, while my classmates remained silent. I switched to a Jewish day school because I preferred to proudly wear a menorah on my school uniform instead of the Maltese Cross of my public school.
A few years later, I started learning karate. That was 1970. Nobody has dared to call me Jewboy to my face ever since. It wasn’t that I beat people up. It was no doubt that I showed I was no longer afraid. I still do karate and today am the North American head of a legendary Japanese karate organization.
There will always be bigots in this world. The key is to communicate to them that you’re not afraid. I happen to have also practiced law in California for 42 years and I agree that lawfare is not likely to turn the tide. But it will raise awareness and spread the pain (financially) until people choose sides. In the current climate, you need to know who your friends are.
Desmond Tuck
Redwood City
Schools should teach about real world
In his op-ed, “Lawsuits are a necessary last resort for students facing antisemitism,”(online May 29), Eric Horodas claims lawsuits against public school districts are necessary to fight antisemitism. He says that Jewish parents have tried complaining to school districts about their children’s experience, without success.
“Some complaints,” he writes, “involve teach-ins, walk-outs and teachers introducing overtly biased political material into classrooms.” Thank you, Mr. Horodas, for laying out so clearly how Zionists label all opposition to Israel as antisemitism. Yes, some Jewish students feel uncomfortable seeing classmates or teachers wearing “Free Palestine” buttons, or holding teach-ins about massacred Palestinian children. But this is not antisemitism. It’s education. Jewish students’ feelings are important, but so are the feelings of other Americans appalled by Israel’s actions in Gaza and beyond..
A school’s job is to keep students safe while teaching them about the real world. Their responsibilities do not include forcing everyone who disagrees with Israel to keep quiet. If opposition to Israel’s crimes reaches the level of physical threat, schools should step in, but students’ discomfort is not school districts’ responsibility. These antisemitism lawsuits are baseless and should be dropped.
David Spero
San Francisco
Logic can’t defuse years of hate
Dehumanization, integral to intense hatred, allows indoctrinated people to murder the defined “subhuman” with as little concern as swatting flies. Nazis reduced Jews to numbers (branded into forearms); Islamists classify Jews as “dhimmis,” second-class citizens described in schoolbooks as “sons of pigs and monkeys.” Western media’s daily rants promote anti-Israel/Jew hatred; it’s become socially acceptable to murder Jews/Israelis walking on beaches or praying in synagogues.
Laura Einhorn’s May 18 op-ed naively suggests logic can counter years of inculcated hate.
Hezbollah terrorists have more munitions than Lebanon’s army. News reports cite Lebanese deaths after Israel bombs missile launch sites specifically placed by Hezbollah among civilians, which is proscribed by the Geneva Convention, never citing Hezbollah’s 500 drone/missile weekly attacks on Israeli cities, nor Israeli deaths, thus reversing “cause-and-effect.”
As vile as disgusting misrepresentations of Jews/Israelis are to human history, it’s worse to read J.’s story that 50% of American Jewish youth accept leftist media lies regarding Israel’s multi-front defensive war. (“Nearly half of young U.S. Jews want to replace Israel with binational state, poll finds” May 27 online) These deluded youth fight against their co-religionists and the only Jewish-majority nation on earth, happily furthering the efforts of many of the world’s Muslim-majority nations. Bloomberg analyses of AI news showed a 95% leftist bias.
Objective analyses that use Hamas terrorists’ own data, which disprove every terrorist claim, get zero media coverage.
Objective education is the nemesis of “hate inculcation.” We Jews cannot allow failed education of our own youth, lest they become the “useful idiots” Lenin described, who “help tie the noose around their (and our) own necks.”
Fred Korr
Oakland
Don’t give up on Israel
Regarding “Nearly half of young U.S. Jews want to replace Israel with a binational state, poll finds” (May 27 online): There are currently 56 Muslim countries (search online for Organization of Islamic Cooperation). The OIC claims 57 countries because they have already included Palestine. They all vote against Israel and the United States at the United Nations, of course. Israel, the size of New Jersey, is the only sovereign Jewish country. Those who think it should be shared with people whose national charters, school curricula and religious authorities call for killing Jews, either don’t know Jewish history or are delusional. They should not be so quick to give Israel up.
Sheree Roth
Palo Alto