Letters to the Editor

Jimmy Carter Was a Flawed Man

Dear Editor:

Jimmy Carter was a flawed man. He led a line of anti-Israel presidents. Carter, Bill Clinton, Barak Obama and Joe Biden brushed aside radical Islam and pressured Israel to give in over and over again to accommodate their vision of the KGB-created Palestinian hoax.

The Soviets believed Israel was the eyes and ears of America in the Middle East. To diminish American influence, they created the Palestinian Liberation Organization. They recruited terrorists from throughout MENA and called them “Palestinians”. They labeled any Arab with an attachment to the British Mandate, a Palestinian. Prior to then, only Jews were referred to as Palestinians.

One should not talk ill of the dead, but neither can we ignore their prejudices. Carter’s book, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid” was a libel that fueled terror.

Sincerely
Len Bennett, Author of ‘Unfinished Work’
Deerfield Beach, Fl.

Stop Honoring Dead Palestinian Terrorists

Dear Editor:

In addition to the very disturbing news that a Columbia professor named Joseph Massad, who it has been reported praised the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, has been selected to teach a course on Zionism, there’s been other very shocking news about what has happened at Columbia earlier in the semester. Recently Bari Weiss, the journalist who authored the 2019 book How to Fight Anti-Semitism, mentioned in her column (thefp.com/p/bari-weiss-the-old-world-is-not-coming-back) that Columbia University students held a “memorial event” for the late Hamas terrorist leader, Yahya Sinwar on campus on Veteran’s Day. That’s outrageous, and the Columbia administration should have prevented this event celebrating a criminal mass murderer.

But let’s be clear: for the past thirty years, America’s elected leaders have been using our tax dollars to finance a regime that has made honoring dead Palestinian Arab terrorists one of its major activities. Since 1994, successive U.S. presidents have sent a total of more than $10 billion to the Palestinian Authority, which names streets, parks, and schools after dead terrorists—including murderers of American citizens. The Palestinian Authority also provides hefty monetary rewards to the families of terrorists.

So yes, it’s horrific that a Palestinian Arab terrorist was honored on the campus of one of America’s elite Ivy League universities and that they are having an extremist professor teach about Israel. But it is even more troubling that America’s political leaders have bankrolled a regime that honors such killers day and night, in its schools, media, and other public venues—thus raising an entire generation of young Palestinian Arabs who view terrorists as heroes and want to emulate them and murder Jewish Israelis.

Sincerely,
Moshe Phillips
National Chairman
Americans For A Safe Israel, afsi.org

Israel’s Greatest Generation

Dear Editor:

The enemies of the Jewish people had every reason to believe that when mounting their horrific attack on October 7, they’d meet minimal resistance. They thought they’d meet a generation of Jews—in Israel, the U.S., and worldwide—who would collapse like a house of cards.

How wrong they were.

Within hours, and long before any official order had been given, hundreds of thousands of fighting-aged reservists had already reported for duty. Driving south and north independently from all over the country, some with no gear or weapons at all, they answered a call to save Jews from peril. They did not think twice before leaving their families and holiday tables. They thought of nothing other than what they could do to help.

The individual stories of heroism are almost too many to comprehend. There was Aner Shapira, 22, who was at the Nova music festival. When the attack began, he and his friends took cover in a small public shelter with no door. With terrorists closing in, he assured the more than twenty people in the shelter that if grenades were thrown into the tight enclosure, he’d catch them and throw them back out. Unarmed, he protected the small opening with his body, throwing back no fewer than seven grenades with his bare hands before one took his life. His courage and sacrifice bought invaluable time for those hiding inside.

There was Ben Shimoni, 31, who fled the Nova massacre and made it to safety, only to turn around and drive back twice more to try and save as many people as he could. Lt. Adar Ben Simon, 20, led dozens of young military cadets to safety at the Zikim training base, before leading a charge on the incoming wave of terrorists. Sgt. Matan Abergil, 19, saved the lives of six friends by jumping on a grenade that had been thrown into their armored personnel carrier.

Nor was this valor seen only on the battlefield. In the days, weeks, and months that followed, young Israelis stepped up anywhere they were needed: volunteering with refugees who had fled from all across the country, entertaining and educating children in hotels and makeshift trailer schools, picking crops from abandoned fields, renovating dilapidated bomb shelters, babysitting for families of reservists who had been called off to war.

The list goes on and on. For weeks, the most common hashtag on Israeli social media was lo noflim midor tashach, which translates loosely as “we’re as great as the generation of ’48”—just as selfless, brave, and values-driven as the pioneers and fighters who founded our country.

How did our generation go, in the blink of an eye, from being the “TikTok Generation” to worthy of comparison to The Greatest Generation?

The answer, I believe, is simple. In a word—Zionism. In three—Zionism is hope.

Sincerely,
Avi Gamulka