Is Nadler’s Tunnel Project Doomed?
Dear Editor:
The 55th Anniversary for opening of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge on November 20, 1964 reminded me of other transportation history. Design of the bridge did not include a pedestrian walkway, bicycle path or connection to the existing Fourth Avenue Bay Ridge subway. Opening of the bridge in 1964 resulted in the subsequent demise of the 69th Street Brooklyn–St. George Ferry. Few remember the long forgotten proposed tunnel between 69th Street in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn and St. George, Staten Island. The concept was to extend subway service from the Brooklyn BMT line to Staten Island.
Ground was broken with entrances at both ends in the 1920’s, but the project quickly ran out of money and was abandoned to history. When living on Shore Road in Bay Ridge Brooklyn, friends and I would look to no avail in attempting to find the abandon site filled in decades earlier. Flash forward 95 years later and we have the proposed $10 billion “Cross Harbor” rail freight tunnel project.
This project is sponsored by the NYC Economic Development Corporation and championed by Congress member Jerry Nadler as his number one transportation priority. After thirty years of lobbying by Nadler, the project has yet to even complete the federal National Environmental Review (NEPA) Process. Don’t be surprised if it is doomed to become a relic of history.
Sincerely,
Larry Penner
(Larry Penner is a transportation historian, writer and advocate who previously worked 31 years for the United States Department of Transportation Federal Transit Administration Region 2 New York Office. This included the development, review, approval and oversight for billions in capital projects and programs for the MTA, NYC Transit, Long Island Rail Road, Metro North Rail Road MTA Bus, NYCDOT Staten Island Ferry along with 30 other transit agencies in NY & NJ).
Legality of Settlements Will Lead to Peace
Dear Editor:
The American Jewish Congress greets yesterday’s historic announcement by the Trump Administration on the legality of settlements as a step in the direction of moving both sides towards a meaningful resolution. We reject the concept that policy changes that benefit Israel are zero-sum and will harm the stalled non-existent peace process.
The status quo is unacceptable. The nearly forty-year-old policy recognizing settlements as illegal has not brought Israelis or Palestinians closer to lasting peace. The history of the peace process informs us that some settlements will be in Israel and some in Palestine. Both parties must be prepared to engage in direct, bilateral negotiations. We believe the United States can play an important role in facilitating the talks, but ultimately both parties must dictate the terms of peace.
This action by the Trump Administration will create pressure on the Palestinians to return to the table and negotiate. As such, this decision in no way prejudges the eventual resolution and the final status of settlements with the Palestinian territories–leaving the two-state solution on the table.
Sincerely,
Jack Rosen
President
American Jewish Congress
Rewriting Jews Out of Existence
Dear Editor:
Among the most chilling of experiences was a tour of The Hebrew Congregation of St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. We were shown Torah scrolls with odd looking numbers on each and were told, “Hitler gave an order to his generals: burn the synagogues, but save the silver and the scrolls. They marked and catalogued each item. Hitler’s intention for after the war, when he had killed all the Jews in the world, was to make a “Museum of the Extinct Race.”
Today’s deliberate rewriting of history to deny Israel’s right to exist, to portray Israel as an illegal, evil usurper, and to write Jews out of centuries old history in their ancient homelands, is the first step in this narrative to eliminate…us. George Orwell, 1984, said it best, “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
Melanie Phillips, a British journalist, “From Congress to Classrooms: Reframing the Israel Narrative” gives us a telling example. “In Britain…David Collier wrote about a textbook, The Middle East: Conflict, Crisis and Change, 1917-2012, that is used in schools as part of the history curriculum…a systematic loading of the narrative to sanitize the Arab war against Israel, disproportionately mention violent Zionist responses, and obscure the overwhelming legal, historical and moral Jewish claim to the land. More astoundingly still, it makes no mention of Hitler’s ally, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini, who did more than anyone else to incite the Arab mobs against the Jews.
America is seeing a similar attempt to indoctrinate schoolchildren into anti-Israel falsehoods and, worse yet, into outright hatred. In Newton, Massachusetts, parents discovered in 2011 that a textbook used by ninth-graders called the Arab World Studies Notebook was telling pupils: “…women have been active in the Palestinian resistance movement. Several hundred have been imprisoned, tortured, and killed by Israeli occupation forces.”
Similar attempts to subject pupils to anti-Israel propaganda have been identified in California, Chicago, New York City and elsewhere. “
We have Rep. Tlaib attempting to rewrite history, telling us how the Arabs helped Jews survive, a complete and utter lie. “The Arabs did not provide the Jews with anything after the Holocaust, except more wars and death,” Shir stated. “The Jews who survived, immigrated to Israel were forced to deal with terrorism, the Arabs’ repeated rejection of coexistence and peace until they had no choice but to defend themselves.”
And in New Jersey, “P” is for Palestine” a reading of the anti-Israel book at the Highland Park Library is now the subject of a possible “watershed lawsuit”.
And yet more rewriting of history- “Jesus was Palestinian of Nazareth,” Linda Sarsour tweeted. “Are you that stupid?” Yair Netanyahu, son of the Israeli prime minister, retorted to Sarsour’s comment, “Jesus lived during the Second Temple period, prior to the Romans renaming Judea as Palestina.” The New York Times published an opinion piece that claimed, “Jesus, born in Bethlehem, was most likely a Palestinian man with dark skin.” And as I wrote in 2016, “Silence in the Face of Slander,” “At the Democratic National Convention, the Rev. Barber’s speech calling “Jesus a brown-skinned Palestinian Jew” is factually incorrect slander that the Palestinian Arabs use against Israel in rewriting their own false narrative, whose goals are to erase Jewish 3,000-year history and invent false Palestinian, Muslim and Arab histories in this land.”
In 1930’s Germany, facts no longer mattered, lies became part of the norm, routinely printed in mainstream media, taught in universities and schools, with its larger goal of inciting hatred and violence. This is how it began, drip by poison drip, repeating The Big Lie, the telling of tall vicious tales, long enough until…
I will end by hoping this article doesn’t end up displayed someday in a museum, tagged by a number, telling of a people who once were…
Sincerely
Ginette Weiner,
Scottsdale, AZ
