Setting the record straight
We applaud Rabbi Peretz Wolf-Prusan’s call for respectful, open discussion about Israel in our community, and his plea for an end to stone-throwing. (“Bitter fallout from ‘Rachel’ screening showed us a lot about ourselves,” Aug. 21). As the recipient of a particularly large stone — being called “virulently anti-Semitic” by the prominent Koret and Taube foundations — we would like to set the record straight.
Jewish Voice for Peace has always been unequivocal in our support for security and self-determination for Israelis, and consistent in our criticism of all violence in the conflict.
We are based in the Jewish community with an overwhelmingly Jewish membership — including rabbis, Holocaust survivors, Jewish educators, and Israeli military veterans. Many have lived in Israel or have family members there. We have every bit as much right to speak out as Jews as do the Koret and Taube Foundations. But because we care about the human rights of Palestinians as well as Israelis, we are viciously attacked.
Our disagreements over Israel are not going to go away. There is strong support in the Jewish community for Israel to stop settlement construction and engage in meaningful talks to end the occupation. Attempts to shout down these views only harm our community, and ultimately the peace process.
Joel Frangquist, Dana Bergen, Karen Platt
Jewish Voice for Peace, Bay Area chapter
‘Hands off Hamas’
I’d like to respond to the article in last week’s issue by Rabbi Peretz Wolf-Prusan about the “Rachel” screening and how it showed the divisions within the Bay Area Jewish community.
His letter went on to speak about tolerance, mutual respect and so on.
I’m in the East Bay, but I’ve been assisting the new South Bay Voice for Israel in a counterdemonstration against a weekly anti-Israel demonstration in the South Bay. That anti-Israel demonstration is led by two Jewish sisters who are some of the most virulent anti-Israel people I’ve ever come across.
One of them sums up the history of the conflict as, first there was Canaan, then came “Palestine,” only to be later invaded by the Zionists. Her timeline conveniently overlooks about 1,000 years of Jewish history (the Kingdom of Judea). She sports a cap filled with all sorts of ultra-liberal “flair,” along with a stitched patch on the front side that reads “Hands Off Hamas.”
I’d sure like the good rabbi to meet these two “nice Jewish girls” and then talk to me about respecting people like that around here.
David Holsey | Castro Valley
Time to look within
As the month of Elul begins, I write to thank Rabbi Peretz Wolf-Prusan for his forthright op-ed about the showing of “Rachel” at the Jewish Film Festival, and j. for running his piece.
Rabbi Wolf-Prusan is right to decry the “groundless hatred” in the attempt to bully the JFF, a beloved community institution.
The High Holy Days present the obligation to look searchingly within ourselves and our community, to ask where we have fallen short in the last year, and to decide to change those things.
How have we acted towards Jews with a different perspective on Israel? Have we welcomed every Jew, regardless of such opinions, into our community?
As Americans, have we supported our president’s call to stop building on Palestinian land? Have we supported the organizations, like Jewish Voice for Peace, which have been diligently working for peace? Are we satisfied with our own work for peace?
Has our community acted with full humanity towards the Palestinians? Have we treated them as we would want to be treated?
Now is the time in our year to ask these questions of our community and ourselves, and, if needed, to make the decision to change.
Glen Hauer | Berkeley
Delegitimizing Israel
Rabbi Wolf-Prusan confuses tolerance with acceptance of the intolerable. There is a big difference between legitimate criticism of democracies and blatant defamation. Events, such as those held by the S.F. Jewish Film Festival, that demonize Israel and increase loathing for Jews should not be funded by mainstream Jewish organizations and should be condemned, not beatified as acceptable views in our tent of ideas.
We’re not talking about people who quibble over where final borders should be; these delegitimizers compare Israel to Nazis and protest the very existence of a Jewish state.
Organizations honored by Hamas and Fatah terrorists and who cheer for genocidal Ahmadinejad should not be legitimized by our community.
Lee Green | Redwood City
‘Nazi’ outrage hypocritical
It is human nature to overlook the flaws in one’s political allies and to dwell on the flaws in one’s political opponents, as illustrated in Menachem Rosensaft’s Aug. 21 op-ed condemning Rush Limbaugh’s use of Nazi analogies (“Time has come for GOP to denounce Rush Limbaugh”).
I am not writing to defend Limbaugh, but to take issue with the statement “Democrats appear to be far more willing to confront and publicly denounce bigots and extremists in their own fold.” Professor Rosensaft must have slept through the eight years of George W. Bush’s administration, where “Bush=Hitler,” “BusHitler” and other Nazi comparisons were standard fare at anti-war and anti-Bush protests. Rather than “confront and publicly denounce” this rhetoric, the protestors were publicly praised as patriotic by the highest levels of the Democratic party. Only now that the jackboot is on the other foot (to mangle a phrase) are Democrats shocked to discover the horrors of overblown Nazi rhetoric has entered American public political discourse.
Demonizing and dehumanizing those with whom you disagree is the first step on a path that ends with making ridiculous and offensive Nazi comparisons. Let’s try to debate the issues on their merits rather than impugn the virtue and motives of the opposition.
Andy Burstein | Pleasanton
J Street misdirected
Surprise, surprise! According to your report, Muslim and Arab Americans are among the J Street donors (“Muslim and Arab Americans among donors to J Street ,” Aug. 21) Probably, the organizers of “debates” about “Rachel” also have lovingly contributed to J Street.
Why am I making this connection? Because both cases have clearly shown how far the J Street has been removed from reality. Where is the “M Street” partner whom they can talk to in the Muslim world? They must feel like the Sholom Aleichem’s shatchen who thought to herself: “Half-deal is done. The bride said ‘Yes.’ Now I need to convince only the groom.”
The J Street sympathizers say “yes” to all sorts of Israeli concessions. They are missing just a minor detail in the push to finalize the Israeli-Palestine “marriage” accord, i.e., concessions from the Arab side. A somber look at the past has convincingly demonstrated that Israeli unilateral concessions don’t lead to mutual understanding. Only reciprocal steps can solve the conflict.
Vladimir Kaplan | San Mateo
Skewed justice
What is this world coming to when Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the only person convicted in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, is accorded a hero’s welcome in Libya after his release from a Scottish prison on “compassionate grounds” and, Ahmad Vahidi, Iran Revolutionary Guard Quds Force commander, wanted in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires is nominated by Iran’s president to be defense minister?
It’s a sad commentary when mass murderers are given laurels while their victims are often too soon forgotten. I am reminded of Rep. Tom Lantos, who criticized Yahoo executives as “moral pygmies,” and cannot fathom the cruel ironies of these two seemingly disconnected events.
On the bright side, Rep. Barney Frank had the common sense to publicly scold a woman who compared President Obama to Hitler and his health care plan to Nazi eugenics. Good for Frank! We need more leaders with Frank’s ballsy attitude to criticize those who ridiculously co-opt the Shoah to make political hay. I’m so sick of the misuse of the terms “Nazi” or “Holocaust” as superlatives in public discourse or debate.
At least there is some justice, though al-Megrahi and Vahidi’s stories call that into question.
Steve Lipman | Foster City