Letters to the Editor, September 16, 2024: America's restraining orders

America’s restraining orders

Regarding “Yemen’s Houthis fire missile at central Israel, IDF intercepts with Arrow system” (jpost.com, September 15): With the Houthis successfully evading Israel’s air defense system outside Israeli airspace, with thankfully minimal damage although with some injuries, Israel may again respond with a strong punch in the nose to Yemen. However, Yemen’s instructor, Iran, remains out of bounds for retaliation apparently because of America’s restraining orders to prevent escalation.

What will it take for all the decision-makers to say enough is enough? Would it have to be another, God forbid, major October 7 death toll? The United States would never allow this kind of missile warfare to go unanswered if projectiles were hitting American targets. The US must be made to understand that Israel has a prime obligation to protect its citizens, and that it would require a devastating blow to Iran.

FRED EHRMAN

Ra’anana

Can anyone at The Jerusalem Post inform us as to why the best air forces in the world – Israel, the US, and the UK – cannot bomb the Houthis extensively enough to stop them?

DAVID ROTENBERG 

Jerusalem

Delegitimize and degrade

As “The Gaza war is about Iranian aggression” (September 12) clearly delineates, all aggression against Israel since October 7, on numerous fronts, has been instigated, encouraged and paid for by Iran.

Until the world, and primarily the US, applies the harshest of sanctions and critical condemnation on the rogue nation, Iran will continue, by proxies or any means possible, to delegitimize and degrade Israel. The serpent’s head must be cut in order to have any chance of moving toward a lasting peace, which then must also include the necessary deradicalization of those striking on Israel’s borders and of our Palestinian enemies from within.

As long as this type of action is delayed, wars of one form or another will continue, even as the world, via the UN, states numerous falsehoods regarding Israel, allowing for the continuing portrayal of the Palestinians as a victim doomed to remain so, an approach serving the interests of those decrying a Jewish state.

STEPHEN VISHNICK

Tel Aviv

Wrapped around his pinkie

In “Most US Jews back Israel, but they don’t support the Netanyahu government” (August 21), Nadav Tamir gets two empirical details wrong.

Prime Minister Netanyahu turned out to have been right about the JCPOA. It enabled Iran to fund Hezbollah, Hamas – including the October 7 atrocity, the Houthis, infiltration of sleeper cells in the West, and development of missiles, while waiting patiently for the deal to expire so they could demonstrate that they have become a nuclear weapons state. Then-US president Obama, who had J Street wrapped around his pinkie and treated it as a toy, was totally wrong.

The Palestinians have no interest in a two-state solution. They rejected it when it was first proposed in 1937, and haven’t changed their position since. Their position won’t change because the Muslim world created them after WW I to ensure that the rights promised to Jews at San Remo would never come to be.

Once these truths are internalized, it should be obvious why Jews should reject the JCPOA and the thinking that underlies it, thinking that continues to percolate within the Democratic Party and the State Department. AIPAC sees its mission as supporting Israel whichever party is in power; J Street sees its mission as supporting the Democrats, however foolish their policies may be, including interfering in Israel’s domestic politics to advance their real loyalty, to the American Left.

 The anti-Israel “fringe” in the Democratic Party may be 30%; that’s not “a small minority,” and they have the rest of the party running scared. Vice President Harris’s campaign is based on the same premise as Obamacare: You have to elect her to find out what she really stands for. Jews who vote for her will be betting that she won’t turn into another Obama when it comes to foreign policy.

YALE ZUSSMAN

Framingham, Massachusetts

Wake up

David Christopher Kaufman was spot on in his description of filmmaker Sarah Friedland (“Sarah Friedland & the tragedy of the ‘house Jew,’” September 11). Of course, being that the writer is part-Jewish/part-African American, he can get away with describing Friedland as a “house Jew,” without being accused of racism or antisemitism.

The truth is, he merely vocalized what many Jews felt after listening to her acceptance speech at the Venice Film Festival: Jews in America, or more accurately, in Hollywood, shouldn’t think for a minute that they are better or whiter than any other Jew, in America or elsewhere.

They can claim to be anti-Zionist or even atheists. When Hitler came for the Jews, he didn’t differentiate. As we know all too well, Hamas and ISIS don’t either. They want us all dead, no matter how left-wing or woke you may claim to be. Wake up before it’s too late.

CHANA PINTO

Tel Mond