Letters to the Editor September 11, 2023: Major and valued exercise

Major and valued exercise

I would like to give a highly deserved thank you to Liesbeth Heenk (“Never forget!” September 8), who I learned through this article is not Jewish but has dedicated her business, Amsterdam Publishers, to the Holocaust, by bringing to print books by survivors and their families.

Most writers of these accounts for various reasons had difficulty in finding a sympathetic ear to relay their heart-rending stories.

It is therefore paramount that the work of Ms. Heenk is formally recognized especially from here in Israel where as time moves on, the numbers of those who witnessed the horrors firsthand are naturally declining.

This is a major and valued exercise being taken on at Amsterdam Publishers, where they are determined to see that the horrors of the Holocaust do not end up as just a footnote in the history of WW II.

STEPHEN VISHNICK 

Tel Aviv

End-of-conflict agreement

There are extensive negotiations going on involving the US, Saudi Arabia, Israel and for the first time the Palestinians, as described by Herb Keinon in his article, “Fall forward for peace efforts” (September 8). Usually the Palestinians refuse to have anything to do with negotiations with Israel; they have shunned all previous major concessions by Israel.

But now that the Saudis are involved, they cannot simply ignore the situation, and so President Abbas of the PA has gone to Saudi Arabia and given their list of demands that Israel must meet, including recognizing a Palestinian state and stopping all further settlement activity. In addition they are expected to receive significant financial support from the Saudis and the US.

The Saudis are expected to receive the latest fighter jets from the US, a blanket security agreement, and a civilian nuclear program. The Saudis are also expected to receive a defense pact with Israel in which Israel agrees to protect the Saudis against all enemies (read Iran).

What should be Israel’s minimum conditions for agreeing to such an extensive four-way pact? In my opinion, Israel should demand no less than a peace agreement by the Palestinians that will be an end-of-conflict agreement that includes all Palestinian factions and a cessation of all terrorism and military actions.

In other words, Abbas and the Saudis must also persuade Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the PFLP, and all other factions to come on board. Failing this, Israel should not accept the agreement. Admittedly this will be difficult to do, since PIJ is a wholly-owned proxy of Iran. But they have to decide where their interests lie, with the Palestinians or with Iran.

JACK COHEN

Beersheba

Fooling many

I really can’t say if Mahmoud Abbas believes his lies, but I certainly agree that he is unfit to lead the PA (“Delusions from Abbas,” editorial, September 8). He is in the eighteenth year of his four-year elected term, has enriched himself by embezzling monies donated for his people’s benefit, and has refused to negotiate on multiple Israeli and US proposals for the establishment of the state he claims to want. All the while, he incites the people living under his administration to attack and kill Jews, and richly rewards those who answer the call with lifelong stipends to murderers and/or their families.

The question in my mind is how can people believe him? He certainly seems to have fooled many. President Biden warns Israel to avoid “unilateral actions,” like allowing Israelis to build homes in Area C, which the Oslo Accords put under full Israeli control. Every Associated Press report on the conflict includes the statement that the Palestinians are living “under occupation” and want the land Israel captured (sic) in 1967 for their future state.

There are even some Israelis who fault Israel for having “maintained the occupation” for so long, as if they are ignorant of Arab, and later Palestinian, intransigence – like Abbas announcing that only the Israelis, not the Palestinians, need to make concessions, and stating that the signing of a peace treaty will not end the conflict.

People who call themselves “pro-Palestinian” have told me that the proposals rejected by Palestinian leaders were not that good. My feeling is that the leaders’ proper response to being offered less than they wanted should have been to keep negotiating, while working to build the infrastructure needed by the state they claim they want to build, being completely transparent in accounting for the use of all donated funds.

TOBY F. BLOCK

Atlanta

Abbas has filled the 18 years of his four-year term of office with hideous lies about Israel, Jews, and the Holocaust. He has done this, not because he is delusional, but because he is evil and because the world rewards his evil with huge infusions of cash, some of which makes its way into his pockets.

He leads a “culture” that celebrates terror deaths of Israel’s citizens by passing out trays of sweets. Think about that.

Any delusions involved here are manifested not by the wily Abbas, but by the policies of various countries and the UN, which have closed their eyes to the reality of what the hate-based Palestinian national culture has done and continues to do to our world.

JULIA LUTCH

Davis, CA

Forgiveness from the Jewish people

So, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has revoked the prestigious Medal of the City of Paris awarded to Mahmoud Abbas in 2015 (“Paris mayor cites Abbas’s Holocaust denial in revoking his honorary medal,” September 10). Abbas was awarded the medal by Hidalgo  as recognition of his efforts to achieve peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis.

Mayor Hidalgo may feel better following the revoking; I was nauseated by the picture showing the smiling Hidalgo and Abbas at the ceremony awarding the medal. In 2015, didn’t Hidalgo know about the Abbas history of Holocaust denial? If she didn’t, she was terribly ignorant. If she did, far worse, she knowingly awarded the medal to a Holocaust denier.

These are the steps Hidalgo must take before receiving even partial forgiveness from the Jewish people for the 2015 gross insult: Demand the physical return of the medal and display it permanently in the Paris City Hall with accompanying explanation; declare Abbas persona non grata in Paris; initiate proceedings to have Abbas arrested, if he steps foot on French soil, and brought before the International Court of Justice for Holocaust denial and indirect responsibility for the murder of hundreds of Jewish Israelis by Palestinian terrorists; issue a public letter apologizing to the Jewish people for presenting the award in the first place; and step down permanently from public life.

YIGAL HOROWITZ

Beersheba

Puzzled by your criticism

As you cogently discuss in “Welcoming Jack Lew” (September 7, editorial), it is very good news that this “most senior government official to serve as America’s ambassador to the Jewish state” will in fact, if confirmed, assume the position. However, I am puzzled by your criticism of him for supporting the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, and your labeling of the deal as “deeply and perilously flawed.”

That deal, like every deal, involved compromises, so it was not ideal from the US and Israeli perspectives. But it was viewed by many US and Israeli nuclear and strategic experts and many world leaders as the best approach to prevent Iran from achieving a nuclear weapon. Due to the deal, Iran got rid of most of its nuclear materials and agreed to unprecedented inspections. Now, following then-president Trump’s pullout from the deal in 2018, Iran is much closer to getting a nuclear weapon and is in a far better bargaining position regarding a possible future agreement.

It is essential that disputes with Iran be solved diplomatically and not militarily, because a military conflict would have very negative consequences for Israel, the US, and the entire world. Of course, recent statements and actions by Iran should be strongly condemned and sanctions not related to the Iran deal should be continued even if Iran agrees to a new deal.

Hopefully, if a new deal is obtained, further negotiations and the possibility of additional sanctions being removed, and other economic incentives, would encourage Iran to stop its very destructive policies.

RICHARD H. SCHWARTZ

Shoresh

Garbage can of vicious lies

Regarding “Pardo’s libelous propaganda” (September 10, editorial): I have nothing but praise for this courageous and forthright opinion piece. It is high time that the false and damaging label of “an apartheid state” be, once and for all, thrown into the garbage can of vicious and cumulative lies where it belongs.

I invite ex-Mossad chief Tamir Pardo to come to a shopping mall in Jerusalem on any day of the week and see how many Arabs walk and shop so freely, and to Hadassah Hospital to see the large number of Arab patients, and significant proportion of Arab doctors and nurses wearing hijabs, to see and take note of the high positions held by Arabs in all facets of  Israeli society. Pardo would do well to take notice of the proportion of Arabs within our borders who would far rather continue with the present set-up than be under the jurisdiction of the PA or of any of the regimes of those countries surrounding us.

As the saying goes, “with friends like that [Pardo], who needs enemies?” Pardo joins other despicable “celebrities” like Ehud Barak and Yair Lapid, who shoot off their mouths slandering and libeling the State of Israel, to the extent that our international standing is severely damaged and then, they dutifully accuse the government of causing the damage to our standing, which they themselves have produced. Then they step in “to save the situation and save the country.”

Your editor is quite correct: Pardo has “crossed a redline.”

LAURENCE BECKER

Jerusalem

His way of destroying Israel

It’s hard to believe that for 30 years Israelis have accepted the carnage brought by the criminal Oslo Accords (“Eternal Jewish desire for peace,” September 10). Criminal, because the terrorist, hater, and murderer of Israelis, Yasser Arafat was taken out of Tunis by Yossi Beilin and Shimon Peres to where he had been exiled by Ariel Sharon. They reinstated him in Israel as a statesman and enabled him to receive the Nobel Prize, making that prize a sham.

While the Oslo Accords were being thrust upon us, Arafat was telling his people that this was his way of destroying Israel. And he was getting thousands of guns which of course he used to murder and maim thousands of Israelis. No one thought to oust the monster. No one listened! The eternal desire for peace was too strong.

Then-prime minister Yitzhak Rabin gave in to the pressures of Beilin and Peres and the course for our self-destruction was put in motion. Rabin signed the fateful accords just as Britain’s prime minister Chamberlain did with Hitler. Fortunately for all of us, Chamberlain resigned, but unfortunately we haven’t had a Winston Churchill prepared to fight for his country until the enemy is defeated.

Sadly, it is our enemies, the non-existent Palestinian people, who are prepared to fight to the end for our Jewish land. It is good to want peace but there is a time for peace and a time for war, and there is no shame but pride in going to war to save the one and only country that God gave us.

May this Rosh Hashanah make us into giants, not the grasshoppers we have been for too long.

EDITH OGNALL

Netanya

Unending respect

The words of Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister James Marape define, once again, how Christian adherence to the Bible causes their untiring support of Israel (“Papua New Guinea opens J’lem embassy as act of Christian faith,” September 7).

We in Israel must value their support and not continuously question it. Israelis need to give unending respect to our Christian allies throughout the world and to those who reside in or visit our country.

The atrocious anti-Christian behavior of some Jews, ultra-Orthodox and secular, in the streets of the Old City and at the Western Wall must be stopped by stationing whatever police force is necessary there, and through educational efforts of enlightened rabbis, and by those responsible for proper behavior at the Western Wall. Further, the government must put an end to bureaucratic actions that do nothing but alienate Christian individuals and pro-Israel organizations.

The hatred of those who seek to harm us, and the hypocritical actions of some of our “friends,” is a sufficient and continuing threat to Israel’s security. Every effort must be made to avoid damaging relations with true friends.

BERNARD SMITH

Jerusalem