Mazel tov to Sue Barnett
Congrats on your retirement, Sue. (“I’m retiring after 22 years as a J. editor, and I’m ready to tell the story,” April 30 online) Now you can be like the rest of us former J. editors: We still read every edition and ask why the writer left out pertinent information that should have been part of a story or how a word was misspelled. Editing never leaves us. We had some great times together!
Peggy Isaak Gluck
J. news editor, 1973-1990
Foster City
Poor framing of ethnic studies
I was troubled by J.’s article on ethnic studies in San Francisco public schools and the framing of the debate surrounding the curriculum. (“Ethnic studies curriculum that sidesteps Israel adopted by S.F. schools,” May 5 online)
The article notes that the Israel-Palestinian conflict was intentionally removed from the newest curriculum draft, but it fails to acknowledge a far more important point: The conflict had no place in the curriculum to begin with.
Ethnic studies in California was designed to focus on the experiences, histories and contributions of minority groups in the United States and California. The inclusion of a complex foreign geopolitical conflict was always outside the intended scope of the course. By presenting its removal as noteworthy or controversial, the article inadvertently reinforces a troubling tendency to center the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in virtually every political, social and educational discussion. This is a pattern that too often results in Jews being cast as symbolic representatives of broader societal grievances.
The article also presents opposition to liberated ethnic studies primarily through a Jewish lens. In reality, many educators, parents and scholars from a wide range of backgrounds have raised concerns about the curriculum.
Some critics argue that aspects of the curriculum promote a worldview rooted primarily in victimhood rather than empowerment. Others worry that an excessive focus on identity categories deepens division. In addition, many immigrants and children of immigrants who fled authoritarian communist regimes, including those from communist China and the former Soviet Union, are uncomfortable with curriculum frameworks that portray capitalism primarily as a source of oppression or social harm.
These concerns deserve to be acknowledged honestly and in full. Reducing the debate to a narrow dispute over Jewish objections oversimplifies a much broader and more substantive conversation about the purpose of education and the role ideology should play in the classroom.
Dana Bernstein
San Francisco
Chernobyl op-ed gets it wrong
The opinion piece “Decades after Chernobyl, Russia’s arrogance persists” (April 24 online) has two significant problems.
One, there is no connection between Chernobyl and Russia’s invasion other than both occurred in Ukraine. Two, the statement that the accident led to the release of “more radiation than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki” gives the false impression that the health effects from the accident were greater than those of the bombs.
The facts are that the widely accepted total short- and long-term death tolls from Chernobyl are estimated to be several thousand, while the deaths from the bombs are greater by a factor of a thousand. This is consistent with my experience, gained over 65 years as a practicing nuclear engineer. I worked in all aspects of the nuclear reactor lifecycle, from design through decontamination and cleanup.
Safety analyses require knowledge of the health effects of radiation. The public is largely uneducated in this area, leading to fear of the unknown.
The continuing casualties and destruction resulting from Russia’s invasion are sufficiently damning, independent of Chernobyl.
Abe Weitzberg
San Rafael
School betrays its own mission
Prospect Sierra, a private school in El Cerrito, promises “students the tools to build a better world.” But by severing its longstanding ties with Camp Tawonga, because the Jewish camp employs counselors who served in the Israel Defense Forces, it violates the values of “equity and inclusion” and “intellectual engagement and care for others” that it professes on its website. (“Private East Bay school ends relationship with Tawonga over its ties to Israel,” April 22 online)
Worse yet, Prospect Sierra aligns itself with more sinister forces that demonize the Jewish state, a multicultural democracy and U.S. ally where 2 million Arab citizens enjoy greater rights than elsewhere in the Middle East, gay rights are protected and thousands of Jews of color have sanctuary after rescue from persecution in Ethiopia.
Since when did performing compulsory military service defending one’s country — especially a U.S. ally and democracy — justify being shunned?
Leading experts John Spencer, chair of urban warfare studies at West Point, and retired British Army Col. Richard Kemp have documented the unprecedented steps the IDF takes to minimize civilian casualties. Prospect Sierra ignored fact-based expert opinions by blithely deeming IDF service anathema.
Prospect Sierra’s website emphasizes “Black Lives Matter.” Israeli and Jewish lives matter too, but Prospect Sierra diminishes them by excluding IDF veterans as unfit. Of course, Jews make up most of the IDF. By severing ties with a camp whose only crime is having IDF veterans as counselors, Prospect Sierra promotes no educational goal, let alone its promised “tools to build a better world.” Instead, it signals to its students and their parents that treating Israelis and Jews as “other” is acceptable rather than shameful.
Alan K. Goldstein
Napa
The peace camp is dead
Despite the efforts of groups like the People’s Peace Summit (“Don’t give up on us now’: Israel peace summit convenes thousands to seek elusive progress,” May 1 online), the peace camp in Israel is effectively dead, having thoroughly discredited itself by its failed policies of the past.
The peace camp was largely responsible for the 1993 Oslo Accords, which granted international legitimacy and a permanent base in our historic homeland to Yasser Arafat and his gang of unrepentant terrorists. They assured us this would lead to peace. It obviously did not. It was also behind the 2005 forcible expulsion of the entire Jewish population of Gaza, effectively handing the whole territory to Hamas. We can see how that turned out.
Now they want to curb all settlement activity in Judea and Samaria and surrender these lands to a Palestinian state. They say that this repudiation of our own national heritage will somehow end the conflict. It will not.
Palestinian leaders have consistently made clear, for those willing to listen, that this is a fight to the finish. The only possible outcomes for Israel are victory or defeat, where defeat means the end of the Jewish state itself. The peace camp, whether knowingly or unknowingly, is working for Israel’s destruction, and most Israelis know it.
Martin Wasserman
Palo Alto