Letters to the Editor, May 22 2024, Depths of Depravity

The future is now 

“Treating the survivors of October 7” (May 20) was both timely and the services espoused extremely necessary. Living day to day in our beleaguered country, it would be a miracle if not everyone will need some type of counseling service or therapy at some future date. However, for some people the future is now.

In our case, after suffering a stroke recently, speech therapy was desperately needed. Calling our Meuhedet health fund, to which we have been paying fees for almost 40 years, we were informed that there is a one-year wait for a speech therapist, which, in effect, is no service at all. While we must plan for the future, today is here now and the needs are urgent. Is anybody listening?

RUBY RAY KARZEN 

Jerusalem

Porous border

Writer Elie Podeh covers all aspects of Egypt’s situation vis-a-vis Gaza, except for the porous border which is the Philadelphi Corridor (“Israel’s Rafah op hurts Egypt’s plans,” May 20). To my knowledge, most of the tunnels built by Hamas to smuggle armaments, rocket fuel, and cash were rendered ineffective.

What remained was Hamas’s ability simply to bring the same into the Gaza Strip overground by the use of bakshish, to bribe Egyptians who are supposedly guarding the border. Any “day-after” plan has to put a stop to this in the long term in order to stop the remilitarization of Hamas.

DAVID SMITH

Ra’anana

Depths of depravity

Regarding “ICC prosecutor seeks historic arrest of PM, Gallant” (May 21): The headlines were large and your articles discussing and evaluating the ICC case against our prime minister were both numerous and detailed. Rather than discuss the merits of the case, though, why not simply state that these indictments plumb the depths of depravity?

This would have left more room for other news articles and been closer to the truth.

BARRY LYNN

Efrat

The International Criminal Court has decided to issue arrest warrants for both the Israeli prime minister and defense minister. This decision will live in infamy. The attack on October 7, immediately united a divided Israel into defending the State of Israel.

Likewise, the decision by the ICC will unite the country behind Netanyahu. They have just ensured that Netanyahu will be reelected in the next election. The ICC has morphed into the “Islamic Criminal Court.” This takes double standards to a new level.

NEVILLE BERMAN

Ra’anana

Double war crimes

In “How would the US have reacted?” (May 17), Boaz Golany’s point is well taken. It should be obvious that Israel needs a decisive victory over Hamas to guarantee that the terrorists will not be able to fulfill their promise to inflict multiple October 7 atrocities on Israelis. Yet, despite Israel’s having achieved an amazingly low ratio of civilian deaths compared to combatant deaths, Israel is accused of committing genocide (by people who dare to call for intifadas and chant “Death to the Jews”).

Nor should this come as a surprise to us. Arab states which are now demanding recognition of a Palestinian state are the same ones that went to war against the Jews in the 1940s instead of helping the Arabs of Palestine prepare for the autonomy offered by the UN Partition Plan for Palestine.

No one asked why Egypt and Jordan didn’t offer any degree of autonomy to the Arabs of Palestine during those countries’ illegal occupation of Gaza and the “West Bank.” Yet, after Israel liberated those areas, while defending Israelis from the genocidal intentions of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, Israel was said to be “occupying Palestinian land,” even though the 1964 founding charter of the Palestine Liberation Organization did not make any claim to lands then under Egyptian and Jordanian rule.

Although Israel withdrew all Jewish communities and Israeli security forces from Gaza in 2005, we are told that Israel still occupies Gaza. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to “pro-Palestinian” protesters that Gaza could have been free from all contact with Israel if Hamas had built the infrastructure needed by a viable state and developed Gaza’s economy, instead of spending $1,000,000,000 to build its extensive network of terror tunnels and committing double war crimes by firing missiles at Israeli population centers from Gaza’s population centers.

TOBY F. BLOCK

Atlanta

Hostile and murderous

In your editorial (“Unrealistic solution,” May 20) outlining the reasons why a Palestinian state is unrealistic, you did not emphasize the key points as to why this is so. They all have to do with the recognition that it would create of another hostile and murderous neighbor on Israel’s underbelly.

Here are two revealing facts based on several polls: The majority of Palestinian residents of Judea and Samaria approved of the October 7 massacre; 80% support the military wings of the terrorist organizations, even as the Palestinian Authority continues to financially reward the families of “martyrs” who murder Jews.

There has not been an elected Palestinian government in eighteen years, though it had been given a four-year term. Why has Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas not called for an election? It’s because the result would be a Hamas-led government just as happened in 2006.

There will be a Palestinian governing authority one day in Gaza. However, it will require something much more than, as you write, that  “any future Palestinian state must come with robust security guarantees.”

Guarantees by any third party are never worth the paper they are written on, no matter how robust. It is only the IDF that must secure the lands from the “river to the sea,” as will be required in Gaza on “the day after.” This presumptive state can be a full member of the UN, have embassies all over the world, have its own police force, and run its daily life unhindered. It will, however, require a Palestinian leadership with visions of true peace with their Israeli neighbors, something that has not existed since 1964 when Yasser Arafat came on the scene, to this very day.

FRED EHRMAN

Ra’anana

Strong dissatisfaction

“Working to prevent pandemics” (May 15) severely violated the one-China principle by hyping up Taiwan region’s participation in the World Health Assembly (WHA) and blatantly calling the Taiwan region a “country.” The Chinese Embassy in Israel hereby expresses its strong dissatisfaction with and firm opposition to The Jerusalem Post publishing the above-mentioned article.

There is but one China in the world. The government of the People’s Republic of China is the sole legal government representing the whole of China. Taiwan is an inalienable part of China’s territory. China’s position on the Taiwan region’s participation in the activities of international organizations, including the WHO, is consistent and clear, that is, this must be handled under the one-China principle, which is also a fundamental principle enshrined in the UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 and WHA Resolution 25.1.

The Taiwan question is entirely China’s internal affair that brooks no foreign interference.

MEI LICHU