Letters to the editor, January 29, 2024: Shine brightly

Shine brightly

Jonathan Schwartz has written a most inspirational piece (“Why I’m going to Israel,” January 21). In this ever more depressing world of ours, humans like Jonathan shine brightly. Does he realize that his identity as Jonathan will become Yoni, the nickname for the Hebrew name Yonatan, within days of his arrival? 

This is not boring patriotism, nor aggressive nationalism. This is togetherness, fulfillment, justification, and well-being, all rolled into one. We welcome Yoni and his ilk. I hope to sit and have coffee with him.

STEPHEN POHLMANN

Tel Aviv

Not ready

A close reading of US Secretary of State Blinken’s words (“Blinken: Arabs won’t pay to rebuild Gaza without path to Palestinian statehood,” January 17), reveals that he knows that the present Palestinian culture, led as it is by antisemites, is not ready to achieve statehood.

Blinken understands, and is in agreement with Netanyahu, that time and cultural reprogramming must take place to prepare Palestinians to live in peace with the Jews.

His constant reiteration that a two-state solution is a condition for the Arab world to rebuild Gaza is said to satisfy the American Left and the Arab world, but he, Biden, Netanyahu, and the Arab world know that it is an aspirational goal, not a project to be materialized immediately.

LARRY SHAPIRO

Calgary

Plant-based diets

Regarding “Diets rich in plant protein could help aging women stay healthy – study” (January 28): As president emeritus of Jewish Veg and author of Vegan Revolution: Saving Our World, Revitalizing Judaism, I want to stress that such diets would also improve the health of aging men, indeed all people, based on many peer-reviewed articles in respected medical journals.

It would also help improve the health of our very imperiled planet. Shifts to plant-based diets would reduce the need to continue destroying forests, replacing carbon-sequestering trees with methane-belching cows. It would also enable reforesting the vast areas of the world now used for grazing and growing feed crops for animals.

The additional trees would absorb much atmospheric CO2, reducing it from its current very dangerous level to a much safer one, potentially leaving a habitable, healthy world for future generations.

So, for your health and that of generations to come, please shift to plant-based diets.

RICHARD H. SCHWARTZ

Shoresh

Sodom’s verdicts

Regarding “World Court asks Israel to prevent genocide, doesn’t order end to war” (January 28): It was an outrageous act for the ICJ to allow a hearing on the preposterous suit brought by South Africa, turning Israel – the victim of October 7 – into the defendant. This court brings to mind the court system in Sodom as explained in the Talmud. Several examples of Sodom’s verdicts are illustrated there.

If one strikes the wife of another and causes her to miscarry, the court would say to the woman’s husband to give his wife to the one who struck her so that she will be impregnated from him. One who crosses a river on a ferry pays four dinars but if he wades across the river he pays eight dinars. If one severs the ear of another’s donkey, the court in Sodom would say to the donkey’s owner, give the donkey to the damager until the ear grows back. In the case of one who wounds another, the court would tell the injured party to give the assailant a fee for his service of bloodletting (Tractate Sanhedrin 109B).

To refer to this body in The Hague as an International Court of Justice is giving it an Orwellian twist of the title.

FRED EHRMAN

Ra’anana

Utterly laughable

Would Catalonia-born Josep Borrell so elevate its or Basque separatist’s’ “self-determination” rights from Spain, as he does Palestinian (“Borrell: Israel can’t have veto right on Palestinian self-determination,” January 24)? Must not any resulting negative consequences stand in the way? Is Israel expected to endanger its own self-determination right by doing so? Would such undeserved, unconditioned grant of statehood be an unequivocal good?

To receive UN membership, an applicant must be a state, peace-loving, accept the obligations of the charter, and be able and willing to do so. Such obligations require it to maintain international peace and security, uphold international law, achieve “higher standards of living” for its citizens, address “economic, social, health, and related problems,” and promote “universal respect for, and observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion.” Manifestly, his putative Palestinian state would satisfy absolutely none of the above.

How utterly laughable are Palestinian complaints about their inability to veto Israel’s admission to the UN. It’s not as though Arab states didn’t try.

They immediately rejected the UN General Assembly’s Partition Plan, then fomented internal strife within the territory of the British Mandate, and when Israel declared independence, they instantly invaded the nascent Jewish state. They subsequently weaponized the entire UN substructure against Israel. It remains the world’s home address for antisemitic incitement.

The not so veiled threat issued by Borrell, the EU high representative for foreign affairs and security, to “impose” his permanent solution to the Palestine question is thus entirely representative of ongoing EU anti-Israel blazing bias.

RICHARD D. WILKINS

Syracuse, New York

‘From the river to the sea’

In her well-written piece on January 24, “UNRWA unmasked – indoctrinating for Hamas,” Zina Rakhamilova makes many accurate assessments of the activities of UNRWA. What she doesn’t explain is the reason it behaves that way. There is a simple answer to that question: self-preservation.

Simply put, if there were to be a peace agreement, it would have to include a solution to the refugee problem. If it does, there is then no reason for the continued existence of UNRWA. Therefore, the employees of UNRWA act in whatever manner necessary to prevent such an agreement.

This also explains why UNRWA says refugee status is inheritable. Unfortunately, one cannot expect the United Nations to take the obvious step of transferring the care of these refugees to its Human Rights Council, because the UN is not an organization which acts rationally to promote peace, despite that being the stated reason for its existence.

At some point, Israel will have to declare UNRWA a terrorist organization and expel all of its employees “from the [territory between the] river to the sea.”

HAIM SHALOM SNYDER

Petah Tikva

We do so poorly

Here in Texas, and I suspect in the rest of the US as well, if an athletic coach has not won a single game in 25 years, we do not call him an expert; we call him an absolute failure and fire him.

So, what sense can it possibly make to publish the failed views of Dr. Alon Ben-Meir (“Time for a reckoning,” January 23)? He writes: “Unlike at any other time in the past, the two-state solution is now back at the front and center of any future Israeli and Palestinian discourse and is seen as the only viable option.”

At the conclusion of the article, he is described as a retired professor of international relations who taught courses on international negotiation. 

Perhaps listening to these kinds of experts is the reason we do so poorly in our negotiations?

DORON BEN-AVI

Austin