letters

Don’t blame the French

This is regarding Milena Kartowski-Aiach’s op-ed: “Amid anti-Semitism, French remain passive” (July 25). By just reading the headline, I expected to read yet another critical and negative view of the French people in general toward the Jews. Maybe the title should have been“… French Jews remain passive,” as the writer is implying Jews and non-Jews alike in her essay, but the title leads you to believe that only French “non-Jews” are passive, suggesting of course, again, anti-Semitism.

I will never say it enough, most anti-Semitism in France is the product of France’s enormous Arab population. And yes, I agree there should have been screams and demonstrations from first, the Jewish groups. Then I have no doubt, French non-Jews would have joined the march.

It is time for Jews to wake up and demand that wrongs to them be stopped. If they choose to remain silent in the face of anti-Semitism, then do not blame the rest of the population. And yes, as you probably guessed, I am French. And I am a Jew.

Michelle Finton | Roseville

Compassionate listening?

The Sept. 5 J. begins with a column about Rabbi Amy Eilberg’s practice of compassionate listening. Then Uriel Heilman’s news analysis presents the American versus Israel viewpoint on the Gaza war. Two views talking past one another.

Then Rabbi Benjamin Lau’s opinion piece pointing out that we cannot allow the extremist fringes to dominate public discourse.

Then the story about the Lubavitcher rebbe, who talked about the “optimism and careful choosing of words.”

Then Jon Stewart (born Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz) on being slammed as a self-hating Jew and anti-Zionist for presenting an alternative and nuanced view. Stewart said it best — “You cannot outsmart dogma, no matter what you do.”

Then the letters: folks who declare the “truthiness” of their positions (Stephen Colbert’s word for a statement that feels factual even if it isn’t).

How can we have any rational dispassionate conversations about anything without a little bit of compassionate listening?

Michael Feiner | Albany

Criticism mostly anti-Semitism

“Criticizing Israel’s policy is not anti-Semitism,” according to a headline in J. (letters, Aug. 29), except most of the time it is.

If a kid in school is criticized all the time — while others doing similar things are not — you’d think it’s not really criticism but bullying. The criticism of a person by Comrade Stalin was very likely the first step toward labor Camp/death. Death is what most critics of Israel wish for the ountry.

I haven’t seen “In the Image.” I didn’t want to see “In the Image,” surmising from the description that it shows that some IDF soldiers allegedly do wrong. Not during the war. Not when the other side does a thousand times more wrongs. It would be akin to seeing a film of what some people in Warsaw ghetto did wrong, while the extermination of the Jews was in progress.

It’s not true that the stories of “actual Palestinians” are rarely told. They are told all the time. With great sympathy, condemnation

of the “oppressors,” justification of the “resistance.”

Anastasia Glikshtern | San Francisco

Gaza parents not ‘abusers’

This is not to critique Elie Wiesel’s ad, but to defend Amy Neustein’s response (Views, Aug. 22).

When adult conduct attracts violence and children suffer, parents who never intended such results may be blamed, rubbing symbolic salt into incurable wounds. An example is a single mother whose boyfriend or baby sitter abuses her children, and the mom is blamed. In the 1990s, a boy sued to “divorce” his mother, who had never abused him. Media reports said her boyfriend had abused her, traumatizing her son. Angry readers condemned her and a judge ruled against her.

This is like condemning Gaza parents for “allowing” Hamas to endanger their children. Hamas is composed of militant soldiers whose goal is victory over Israel. The “human shield” strategy promotes their goal. Gazans have not sacrificed their own children; Hamas has actually endangered other people’s children, not their own! Gazans, neither powerful nor influential, were, of course, unprotected. The unimaginable sorrow any Gaza parent feels at the loss of her child should not be blamed on the victims or attributed to “sacrifice.”

This was Neustein’s message. It is unseemly for Jews to condemn others for speaking up on matters of conscience.

Michelle Etlin | Rockville, Md.

Port protest fights injustice

I’m Jewish and I participated in the pickets that caused some workers to turn away rather than help unload the Zim Piraeus cargo in Oakland. We employed the tried-and-true tactic of creating a picket line and encouraging workers not to cross it out of solidarity, in this case with Palestinian workers and their families, especially those in Gaza.

The picket was hardly “extreme,” as Doug Kahn said, and even less “political terrorism” as Israeli Consul General Andy David was quoted as saying. No one was arrested because workers were allowed to cross if they wanted to. It was a passionate but nonviolent picket line.

As death and destruction continue, emotions and rhetoric will probably get stronger, not more reasoned. We all need to speak and act now with more consideration to how we will coexist in the long term.

I have a strong, positive sense of my Jewish identity; I’ve been to Israel several times and the West Bank a couple. I have a sister and family who live on a kibbutz. I haven’t forgotten my familial and our collective losses from the Nazis and other anti-Semitic attackers. But as Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

Jim Haber | San Francisco

Jews of Europe: Leave now!

Jews of Europe, from London to Belgrade, from Dublin to Paris — get out of Europe! Get out now!

If you don’t believe the severity of the situation, read Deborah Lipstadt’s op-ed in the New York Times (“Why Jews Are Worried,” Aug. 20). Stop worrying and start moving. Organize your communities, contact the Israeli Embassy for aircraft and military support to evacuate you. Leave now before your neighbors and their Muslim cohorts terminate your ability to immigrate so that they will round you up for extermination. They already have the “handbook” to do this; it was written by Adolf Hitler 70 years ago.

Leave now! Leave!

Herman Stern | Los Gatos

Where’s the courage?

From Miriam-Webster Online: Courage is “mental or moral strength to venture, persevere, and withstand danger, fear, or difficulty.

Isn’t it ridiculous to say that J. had shown “courage” to publish Amy Neustein’s critique of Elie Wiesel’s ad, as one letter writer says (Aug. 29)? Neustein’s critique itself uses a trick of substituting the actual content of the ad with something she imagined to be there and then writing an article against this imagined content.

Another Aug. 29 letter, “Stop blaming victims of child abuse,” performs a miracle of connecting the ad (and, I guess, Elie Wiesel himself) with “rationaliz(ing) violence against children,” trivializ(ing) abuse of all children,” “condon(ing) violence against Palestinians,” “blaming child victims for their abuse” and “whitewashing a society in which children are expendable.”

Many thanks to Rabbi Ari Cartun for his wonderful response to Amy Neustein’s op-ed.