Why no jabs at Saudi Arabia? Because it’s not Israel
May 5 marked the 40th day of the Saudi bombing of Yemen: 1,200 people killed, including 1,000 civilians and 115 children. Yet hardly any news coverage. Worse, not a single U.N. Human Rights Council resolution or special meeting, nor a U.N. General Assembly emergency session. Not a single call for “proportionality.” No op-eds claiming “not in my name,” because the United States supplies the Saudis with most of their military equipment. No calls to cut off aid to Saudi Arabia. No street protests in the U.S. or Europe. Simply silence.
The next time someone complains when Israel responds to rocket fire, and takes to the streets claiming the U.S. should no longer sell weapons to Israel, or makes any of the usual claims about proportionality, you need to realize something else is going on. Those who take Israel to task do not hold the same standard across all nations.
This is a very public illustration of the global community being very comfortable crossing the line from legitimate criticism of Israel to anti-Semitism. Shame.
Daniel Frankenstein | San Francisco
Anti-Israel ads on buses are out of bounds
Regarding the BDS movement, one forum where it is playing out is on San Francisco’s Muni buses. Another odious anti-Israel ad has just appeared, urging people to “Boycott Israel Until Palestinians Have Equal Rights.”
This is just the latest in a series of ads over the past months and years that have accused Israel of apartheid, murder and ethnic cleansing, and have used just about every other rhetorical tactic to demonize and delegitimize the Jewish state. These ads are counterproductive to the only possible just resolution of the issue: a two-state solution.
Write Muni officials and let them know these ads are offensive, counterproductive and too vicious to be appropriate on the buses our families ride. Contact S.F. Municipal Transportation Agency board chairman Tom Nolan and director of transportation Ed Reiskin at 1 South Van Ness Ave., 7th floor, San Francisco, CA 94103.
David Goldbrenner | San Francisco
Still feeling connected
Your publication has given my late wife, Ann, and me joy in this insane life for all the years we have subscribed. My Ann is, and will always be, my sunrise and sunset, and your publication will continue to be a part of us. I’m almost at the big 9-0, and still feel connected — thanks to J.
Albert Friedman | Sherman Oaks
Love needed for ‘invasive’ plants
There is no doubt that Californians must conserve water, but the Josh Wilson column “The best of all possible droughts” (May 1) depends on erroneous arguments loosely connected to the Jewish idea of shmita, letting the earth rest.
They assume such rest requires valuing “native” plants, which lived here at the time of colonization, and eliminating “invasive” trees, principally eucalyptus (in places like Glen Canyon Park) that somehow affect Islais Creek.
In fact, the hydrology of our city does not depend upon whether the plants near waterways are native or non-native, but upon our water usage, upon paving recharge zones, and upon keeping our waterways free of chemicals and sewerage pollutants. Trees help to filter the rainwater, as well as capture fog drip and return it to the ground. What we should not be doing is polluting our watershed with run-off herbicides used by San Francisco on non-native trees to kill them because they are not “native.”
Giving the earth a rest also requires respect for all species, not valuing only those believed to have been present when Ohlone tribes lived here.
The column referred to the “invasive eucalyptus” of Glen Canyon Park. Eucalyptuses are “limited” in their invasiveness, according to the California Invasive Plant Council. Their roots prevent erosion on Glen Canyon’s steep hillsides; their branches and trunks shelter many species, including birds (such as great horned owls, hawks, woodpeckers, wrens and black-headed grosbeaks) and animals (such as coyotes and raccoons) and reptiles (such as garter snakes).
Jewish values should not include devaluing any species, be they animal or plants. All of us came from somewhere else, but we should take care of everything wherever we are now.
Dee Seligman | San Francisco
Eucalyptuses belong in S.F.
Education is power. Teach about the superiority of plants called “native” and the culpability of plants called “invasive” — people believe that. And “invasive” eucalyptuses made their way into Josh Wilson’s May 1 column.
But they haven’t invaded anything.
San Francisco eucalyptuses are remnants of a forest that covered a much larger area, at one time, 1,100 acres. They were planted by the first Jewish mayor of the city, Adolph Sutro, to “clothe the earth with emerald robes and make nature beautiful to look upon.”
These trees slow climate change, clear air pollution, provide wind and sound barriers and prevent landslides. San Francisco has one of the smallest tree canopies of any major U.S. city — but there is a plan to cut down 18,488 “invasive” trees.
Walking last week in Mount Davidson’s forest (mostly eucalyptuses, 1,600 of which are slated for removal) and listening to the bird songs, I was thinking about Mr. Wilson’s description of eucalyptus-laden Glen Canyon’s “cool, green, but strangely silent interior, not particularly friendly to migratory songbirds.”
Far from choking out animal habitat, as Mr. Wilson claims, the eucalyptus trees are what he ascribes to their absence: a “luscious habitat for local fauna, and full of bugs for hungry birds and bats.” They provide cover and nest sites for great blue herons, double-crested cormorants, hawks and great horned owls, hunting grounds for small birds such as kinglets and brown creepers, and nectar to insects and nectar-feeding birds.
Anastasia Glikshtern | San Francisco
Josh Wilson responds: The point of my column was that by using “the best of all possible droughts” as a teaching moment, we can work more effectively toward an environmentally sustainable society, and reach further as stewards of biodiversity. Habitat-restoration plans for Glen Canyon involve thinning, not clearcutting, the eucalypts (a water-intensive, competitive species that according to the Point Reyes Bird Observatory reduces bird diversity by 70 percent) and replacing the selectively cut trees with native oak that support habitat for a larger variety of plants and animals.
Palestinian state would be a launching pad for terror
Karen Braverman Bujanover (Letters, May 8) wants to envision peace by two states, based on the Green Line. She did not include the usually proposed land swap, so that Israel would retain the Old City, including the Western Wall, and the larger settlements in east Jerusalem and the West Bank.
With the present Palestinian leadership of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, I envision a Palestinian state in the West Bank that would be like Gaza has been, a place from which to launch terrorism against Israel: firing of rockets into Israel, snipers at the border, diversion of cement to build tunnels underneath the border, kidnappings of Israelis, complaints about a blockade and not enough water and electricity, and an economy utterly dependent on foreign financial aid.
Such a Palestinian state would not be peaceful, but rather an incitement for war.
Norman Licht | San Carlos
Unfolding old Middle East maps
Karen Braverman Bujanover worries that the Green Line “has blurred” and that we should “dust off those old maps” lest we forget what a two-state solution looks like.
Why not peek at maps that predate the Green Line? The Green Line is simply the Armistice line — where Israel and the Arabs stopped fighting in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War (which, according to Azzam Pasha, secretary-general of the Arab League from 1945 to 1952, referring to Israeli Jews, was to “be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades”).
Pre-1967 maps refer to the West Bank as Judea and Samaria. Maps of 1922 show the British Mandate for a Jewish home in Palestine included what is now Jordan. Maps from the year 638 would show that Muslims conquered the land that, centuries earlier, belonged to the Jews.
There are 56 Muslim majority countries on maps today. This conflict is about carving the 57th Muslim state (to be called Palestine) out of the world’s only Jewish country. If the Arabs would agree that what’s left will be recognized as the Jewish state, then the conflict will be resolved.
Sheree Roth | Palo Alto