UK: DIRTY MONEY TRAIL

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Readers of the Jerusalem Post have their say.

Letters. (photo credit: REUTERS)

UK: Dirty money trail

Every government in the world knows that PA funds a Pay-to-Slay policy using about 8% of its annual budget, yet only the US government under President Donald Trump is withholding aid to avoid funding terrorism.
It is ironic that in its eagerness not to confront Abbas’s funding of terrorism (“UK office must disclose audits: Did PA use money to pay terrorists?” July 30), the UK government has to lie in Parliament that its aid money is not being used to pay murderers when it constructs a funding route through the World Bank and then cannot even produce audit reports or terms of reference for those audits.

It claims to be a friend and ally of Israel, but leaves Israel to confront the terrorism that the money is paying for! 

Moreover, despite Trump’s rejection of the JCPOA purporting to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons, the very same UK government with its EU partners clings to this agreement, fully aware that 1) the JCPOA has been breached by Iran; 2) it is the victim of Iran’s naval aggression in the Straits of Hormuz; and 3) the JCPOA never stopped Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

Little wonder that the UK Embassy in Israel never responded to Maayan Hoffman’s report.

PETER SIMPSON 
Jerusalem

J Street: The wrong road

Regarding “J Street’s Israel trip wasn’t alternative Birthright. It was better” (July 30) – what a scurrilous piece of propaganda!
J Street is radically left-wing – anti-American, anti-white and anti-Semitic. Its aim is to drive a wedge between the US and Israel and to deliver Israel into the hands of its enemies.

The majority of American Jews consider themselves to be progressives. Their attachment to Israel is minimal. They tend to be less religious and will likely merge into the mainstream, leaving Judaism behind, much as Western European Jews did in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Israeli Jews, by contrast, are mostly supportive of the miracle they’ve created and are proud to share it.

J Street does not expose their students to reality. They skew truth to their own aim. Even their base-line “occupation” is biased.

In the West Bank town of Har Gilo, were the students told that Israel supplies the Arabs with twice the water agreed to at Oslo? At Hebron, were they told of the 1929 massacre of the Jews before the British forced the survivors to flee to Jerusalem? Did they tell them that the PA is responsible for the day-to-day lives of the Palestinians, not Israel?

In Ramallah, did they visit the luxurious neighborhood where Mahmoud

Abbas has his $30 million home?

Did the Peace Now leader tell the students that from 1967 to 2000, Muslims, Christians and Jews traveled freely back and forth to work, shop and play until Yasser Arafat unleashed his suicide bombers against Israeli civilians? Did she explain that that’s why there is a security barrier and checkpoints?
At Susya, did the B’Tselem “activist” admit that they turn Arabs who sell land to Jews over to the PA to be tortured and possibly killed?
American Jewish families who support Israel will continue to send their children to learn about Israel and its surroundings in a positive environment. Progressives will send their children to “Let Our People Know” to further justify their hostility toward Israel.

LEN BENNETT
Ottawa, Ontario

J Streeters should remember that the present situation results from the 1948 war that the Arab states initiated to eliminate the Jews and Israel. We need neither apologize nor justify. Birthright is a program designed to combat assimilation.

ROSALIND FENSTER
Petah Tikva

I was shocked to see an unpaid advertisement for J Street in The Jerusalem Post. The Post publishes articles by Gershon Baskin, which I read with a semi-smile on my face because of his naivety; articles by Jeff Barak make my blood pressure rise; and I do not agree with the pieces by the “Women of the Wall.” All of these reside in Israel and are entitled to their opinion and will have to live with any consequences that arise from what they write.

However, J Street is an American organization whose raison d’etre is to hate Israel and besmirch its name. It supports Iran, which says that it wants to destroy the State of Israel, and brainwashes American Jewish students to oppose and defame the State of Israel. J Street is an anti-Israel organization whose articles should have no place in a newspaper which considers itself Zionist .

Media written on paper worldwide are having a hard time keeping their heads above financial waters and I suggest that if the Post gives anti-Israel organizations a voice in its pages, it will rapidly lose the readers that it has, given the wealth of news available for free on the Internet.

CYRIL ATKINS
Bet Shemesh

In its drive for “balance,” The Jerusalem Post has been feting us to articles about “concerned” American millennials and their need to pursue justice for the “oppressed, occupied Palestinians” at the expense of their actual – not imagined – brothers and sisters, for whom no tears are ever shed.
In “Millennials on a Mission” (July 26) we learned of the desire of these earnest young people to help us benighted local yokels to see the error of our ways, in reference to our lack of enthusiasm for a two-state solution, the much-touted but unsubstantiated threats to our democracy, and other ills. Next we have another glowing account from yet another concerned American millennial about the wonderfulness of the new J Street “better” Birthright, again outlining the original sin of the “occupation.”

In both of these accounts and all others like them, the relentless brainwashing of the “Palestinians” to hate, loathe and despise Jews and Israel is conveniently overlooked.

The fact that any contact whatsoever on any level with the hated Israeli/Jewish “oppressors” is condemned by one and all and those who dare to do so put their lives at risk is also somehow not raised. The ironic joke is that the “Palestinians” that meet these groups have absolutely no support in their wider community, and, in fact, are seen as collaborators by their fellow citizens.

How about this, committed American millennials: thanks for coming here and spending your money, but really, we don’t need it or you. We have enough enemies without adding Jews to them. Stay in America, marry non-Jews and raise non-Jewish children. I am sure you will be happy fighting American exceptionalism back in what you think is your home. We here, who are truly home, still think we are exceptional. 
I’ll take an Evangelical Christian any day over these Jews.

YISRAEL GUTTMAN
Jerusalem

Aiya Napa indiscretion

Regarding “Israeli youth gone wild?” (July 26), okay, so now we know there was no rape in Cyprus. But a dozen young men were allegedly in a hotel room observing and filming several friends having sex with a British tourist. I watched on television their return to Israel, singing and dancing and praising God. These were religious young men! So there wasn’t a crime. But was it proper behavior? It was a sin. Their religious parents are happy? Are their rabbis happy? It disgusts me.

LAURIE BENTNER
Tel Aviv

Wadi Hummus fiasco

It shames me to say so, but I probably agree with Gershon Baskin’s comments in “Have we no shame?” (July 25).
The reason I say “probably” is that I’m writing this without actually having read the article because I don’t want to read that writer’s biased Palestinian propaganda.

If, as I suspect, he is referring to the demolitions in Wadi Hummus, then yes, this was a stupid thing for Israel to do. Israeli often claims that “the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity;” unfortunately, Israel also never misses opportunity – to shoot itself in the foot!

If there is to be any chance for peace, then Israel must win the hearts and minds of the Arab population, and it shows a lack of common sense to destroy hope by knocking down some unfinished buildings while leaving older adjacent ones intact. OK, so they were building in breach of some obscure planning permission rules, but I can’t help thinking of Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, where the Vogon Destructor fleet destroys the Earth, because the earthlings were too lazy to visit the local planning department on Alpha Centauri, which is only four light years away! The person that ordered the Wadi Hummus destruction has the same mentality, but unfortunately for Israel, the rest of the world does not, and this action only reinforces the “aggressive Israelis” stereotype that the antisemitic media portrays. So, Israeli innovation: 10/10, Israeli emotional intelligence: 0/10.

BOB KNIGHT
Modi’in

Post-horror horror

The horror of the massacre of Ukrainian Jews in the days after the liberation by the Soviet army in 1944 (Memorial unveiled for Ukrainian Jews massacred in Holocaust,” July 29) brings to mind the little-publicized fact that in 1946, the year after WWII ended, over 1,000 Jews were murdered in Poland by Polish people.

On one day alone, July 4, 1946, 42 Jews who had been liberated and returned to Kielce, were brutally killed by the townspeople because a teenage boy had accused them of kidnapping him to use his blood for Jewish rituals.

The use of the medieval blood libel, mere months after the horrific murder of the six million Jews was revealed to the world, is a chilling reminder of the tenacity of antisemitism in Europe. 

It is something that cannot be ignored 70 years later and needs to be part of the diplomatic conversation between nations and individuals. If “never again” is humanity’s goal, then “never forget” must accompany it.

MARION REISS
Beit Shemesh

Planting an idea

As president emeritus of Jewish Veg and the author of three editions of Judaism and Vegetarianism, I was pleased to see “Plant-based diets tied to lower risk of type 2 diabetes,” (July 28) However, based on my research, there are other important factors related to adopting such diets.

• Not only can type 2 diabetes often be prevented via plant-based diets, it can also be reversed in many cases.
• Plant-based diets also reduce risks for heart disease, several types of cancer, and other life threatening diseases.
• Such diets are not only very important for human health, but they also reduce climate change and other environmental threats to humanity, the current widespread abuse of farmed animals, and the wasteful use of land, water, energy, and other resources.

In view of the above and more, I ask some of society’s most respected and dedicated people: 

• Why aren’t doctors generally not urging their patients to shift to healthy, well-balanced plant-based diets?
• Why aren’t rabbis addressing the fact that animal-based diets violate Jewish teachings on preserving human health, treating animals with compassion, protecting the environment, and conserving natural resources?
• Why aren’t environmentalists doing more to stress that shifts to plant-based diets are essential to efforts avert a climate catastrophe and other environmental disasters?

RICHARD H. SCHWARTZ, PhD
Professor Emeritus, College of Staten Island

Meat during the Nine Days

Regarding “Fish sales expected to jump as no-meat ‘Nine Days’ approach” (July 26), this year, in the first nine days of Av, there are two Shabbattot when meat is permitted according to Jewish Law. On Shabbat, there is no sadness or mourning restriction for the destruction of the two Temples of Jerusalem. Thus, August 2-3 (the 2nd of Av) and also August 9-10 (Tisha Be’av) are celebrated with the richness of Oneg Shabbat, in line with the words of Isaiah: “You shall call the Day [of Shabbat] a delight” with consumption of chicken, meat (for non-vegetarians) and wine, accompanied with songs of Shabbat joy. 

The Fast of Tisha Be’av (the Ninth of Av) is pushed off to the 10th of Av, starting Saturday, August 10 at sunset, because no mourning enters into the holiest day of the Jewish calendar: Shabbat Kodesh. 

May we merit to see the rebuilding of the Third Holy Temple, which will come only with shalom and the acknowledgment/acquiescence of the entire human race. I can be reached at sagrafstein@gmail.com if you have questions. 

SHELDON ALLAN GRAFSTEIN
Toronto, Ontario