Letters to the Editor, March 20, 2024: Do their part

Do their part

“Three US Jewish teens on how they are picking colleges in a post-October 7 world” (March 15) was disheartening and concerning.

I don’t fault any Jewish teen and their family for deciding to steer away from colleges and universities with high levels of antisemitism. However, I am concerned about the fact that this will lead to a vacuum in pro-Israel voices and Jewish life on those campuses.

Over the past several months, tens of thousands of Israeli young men and women have bravely served in the IDF to protect Israel from terrorists in Gaza and the North. For young American Jews of courage and brave heart, I think it’s important that they recognize the need for their voices and Jewish activism on US campuses. They can do their part for the protection of the State of Israel through their advocacy at American universities to counterbalance pro-Hamas propaganda.

The pro-Hamas factions would love to drive out pro-Israel students, faculty and administration, from Columbia, Harvard, Berkeley, Penn, Tufts, UCLA, and a hundred other major US campuses where Jews have traditionally attended in large numbers. Jews may continue to lose votes on student councils concerning BDS and similar initiatives, but it’s vitally important that their opinions be voiced and their opposition heard by the university community and leadership.

I know it would take courage for a young man or woman to enter the lions’ dens of such campuses, but there is a danger in abandoning these major institutions to the jihadis.

JEFFREY RABIN Los Angeles

Sadly laughable

US President Joe Biden and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan telling Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel needs “a Rafah strategy that works” is sadly laughable, coming from an administration that engineered the shameful and disastrous Afghanistan pullout (“Biden tells Netanyahu in stern call: ‘You need a Rafah strategy that works,’” March 19).

With US troops getting shelled in Iraq and Syria by Iranian proxies, with shipping in the Red Sea harassed with drones and rockets on a daily basis by the Houthis, with having thrown Russia into the arms of China, and other such foreign policy calamities, this administration has no credibility or sagacity to be relied upon. Israel has destroyed three-quarters of the Hamas military capabilities in five months under the most trying of urban warfare circumstances while achieving the lowest civilian casualty ratio in modern warfare. Biden should let Israel complete the job with little interference and supply all the weaponry it needs to complete the job.

All that this criticism leveled at the IDF strategy does is give Hamas more backbone to continue the combat, hoping to get bailed out by the weak-kneed Washington and Brussels pundits, leading to a longer war and many more casualties, civilian and combatants. Enough already!

FRED EHRMAN Ra’anana

President Biden needed a strategy that worked when the US withdrew from Afghanistan. Did he have one? No, he didn’t, hence the debacle. People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.

STEPHEN VISHNICKTel Aviv

Blatant interference

US Senator Schumer’s uninvited and unacceptable intrusion into Israel’s domestic affairs crosses a line, regardless of how supportive he has been over the years. Your editorial (“Don’t interfere,” March 18) is, understandably, parve, but a more vehement response is called for. I’m sure the senator has been monitoring the impact his speech is having here; a wishy-washy admonishment will only encourage him to become even more aggressive.

The Democrats are poised to threaten a reduction in aid if Israel does not soon display a more cooperative attitude toward bringing the war to an end and removing from government those who oppose a two-state solution. As Yogi Berra put it: it’s déjà vu all over again.

It was in 1982 when then-senator Biden threatened to promote cutting aid to Israel unless settlement activity was curtailed. Prime minister Menachem Begin responded with his famous “I am not a Jew with trembling knees” speech. He expressed appreciation for the support of the United States but reminded the senator that Israel was a sovereign nation and capable of determining its own policies. The world, history records, took note of the prime minister’s sharply-worded retort.

Media outlets such as The Jerusalem Post have the responsibility to ensure blatant interference in Israel’s domestic affairs will not go unanswered. A slap on the wrist is not enough.

BARRY NEWMAN Ginot Shomron

One does not have to support Donald Trump or Prime Minister Netanyahu to be troubled by the manner in which Democrats denigrate people with whom they disagree.

Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer says that “as a democracy Israel has the right to choose its own leaders,” but then seeks to undermine the sitting Israeli government. If Schumer is dissatisfied with the outcome of the election he demands, or if there is no election, “the United States will have no choice but to play a more active role in shaping Israeli policy by using our leverage to change the present course,” he warned.

Similarly, Democrats claim they support democracy in America, yet they have used every possible ploy – whether legal or illegal – to delegitimize Donald Trump while in office and prevent the American people from reelecting him. Some members of Congress are already planning to oppose certification of the election if Trump wins in November.

Schumer identifies Hamas as a significant impediment to peace, yet fails to mention the region’s main destabilizing force – Iran.

President Biden claims to support Israel, but he too is afraid to confront Iran directly. Instead, he seeks to limit Israel’s ability to destroy Hamas’s remaining fighting force in Rafah. Biden ignores the alarming increase in American antisemitism – especially within his own party – and is actively courting voters who support Hamas’s savage attempt to destroy the only Jewish state.

Schumer’s pejorative language is familiar. He calls Israelis who oppose a two-state solution: bigots and extremists. In the US, Trump supporters are vilified as racists and extremists. Disparaging whole segments of the electorate obviates the need to deal intelligently with individuals holding perfectly rational opposing views.

Perhaps neither Trump nor Netanyahu deserves to lead their respective countries. Still, that should be determined by the voters, not by opposing politicians who believe they are the sole repository of morality and are therefore justified in nullifying the will of the people by any means necessary.

EFRAIM COHEN Zichron Ya’acov

Sharp reprimand

I should like to commend Marvin Hier for his excellent succinct and sharp reprimand which he issued against the Jewish self-denier Jonathan Glazer (“Glazer desecrated the memory of millions of Jews,” March 17). 

Glazer’s use of and comparison to the Holocaust is nothing short of disgusting, and his refutation of his religion and the traditions passed down to him through his parents and grandparents makes me want to throw up.

Hier could have added one more item in order to enlighten Glazer and his ilk; that he can be quite sure that Hamas will not be as willing to recognize his refutation as are the millions of viewers before whom he chose to spew his venom.

LAURENCE BECKER Jerusalem

Jihad against infidels

In “An Islamist fifth column in the UK” (March 13), Jonathan Spyer is correct in his observation of the rise of mass demonstrations in favor of Hamas in London and around the world. What he fails to point out is that when militant Islamists call for a jihad against infidels, they are calling for the killing of everyone who does not accept the belief that Muhammad was the Messenger of Allah and that Islam is the true religion.

What is patently obvious in every demonstration in favor of the Palestinians is the number of non-Muslims who have joined the demonstrations. What these non-Muslims do not understand is that if the Islamists triumph in their campaign to spread Islam to the entire world, what happened on October 7 in Israel is the same fate which awaits them.

They will be forced to watch while their daughters are gang raped and killed, and their babies burned to ashes. The very people on whose behalf they are now demonstrating will then either cart them away as hostages or cut their heads off, filming the whole event to show the world how proud they are to have carried out what they did.

This is what the demonstrations are all about. Be careful what you wish for. Militant Islamists are not a boy scout movement.

NEVILLE BERMAN Ra’anana