|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Gaza Schools Still Promoting Anti-Semitism
Dear Editor:
Islamic schools, mosques, politicians and media preach a steady stream of anti-infidel, particularly antisemitic, supremacist ideology/theology.
Much terrorism world-wide is supported through organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood runs CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations) in the US and NCCM (National Council of Canadian Muslims) in Canada, MSA (Muslim Students Associations) and Hamas. CAIR infiltrates governments and the military, MSA spreads anti-Semitism in our universities and Hamas calls for the murder of Jews everywhere.
The Brotherhood, founded in 1928, is a global movement dedicated to imposing sharia on all nations and institutions. Their credo is: “Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Qur’an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.”
The leaders of the Muslim world are complicit in their acceptance of violence. Western politicians and media have been far too politically correct in their actions.
Sincerely
Len Bennett
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Synagogue Denial
Dear Editor:
You’ve heard of Holocaust-denial and October 7-denial. Now add synagogue-denial to the list.
Here’s what Hassan Hmeid, a columnist for the official PA daily newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, said on PA Television’s “Capital of Capitals” program on November 9:
“I want one of the Israelis to explain to me: Who was [here] first? Who populated this land? If you tell me: ‘I, the Israeli, populated this land,’ then show me one ancient relic that has a connection to you, your culture, your religion, or your philosophy. Show me one place, for example, a building. In Jerusalem for thousands of years there is not one synagogue until the year 1900, until the [1947 UN] partition [plan] period or the [1917] Balfour Promise.” (Translation courtesy of Palestinian Media Watch.)
Well, let’s see.
In the Old City section of Jerusalem, there is the Ramban Synagogue, built around 1267; the Eliahu HaNavi Synagogue (1586); the Yochanan ben Zakai Synagogue (early 1600s); the Churvah Synagogue (1700); the Beit El Synagogue (1737); the Emtzai Synagogue (mid-1700s); the Istanbuli Synagogue (1764); the Tzemach Tzedek Synagogue (1845); and the Tiferet Yisrael Synagogue (1866-1872).
The list goes on and on. And these are just some of the ones that are still in use today; there were many more that were built over the centuries but destroyed by the Muslims and other conquerors of the Holy Land.
Such a list means nothing to a raging fanatic such as Hassan Hmeid, or to any of the other synagogue-deniers, Holocaust-deniers, and October 7-deniers of the Palestinian Authority, starting at the top with the denier-in-chief, PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
Tragically, they have fashioned an entire society that is awash in denial of established facts and fervent support for insane, antisemitic conspiracy theories.
Sincerely
Prof. Rafael Medoff
Thomas Friedman’s Saudi Pals
Dear Editor:
A lead editorial in the New York Times this week denounced President Trump for “covering up and lying about” Saudi Arabia’s “brutal human-rights violation[s].” The Times slammed Trump’s “fawning, cringe-worthy performance” in defending Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman and criticized him for chastising a journalist who asked the Saudi leader a challenging question. “The role of the news media in our democracy is not to flatter foreign leaders,” the editorial pointed out.
“Covering up.” “Fawning.” “Cringe-worthy.” “Flattering foreign leaders.” Those terms accurately describe the public relations campaign that the Times’s own chief foreign affairs columnist, Thomas L. Friedman, has been waging on behalf of the Saudis for more than two decades.
Never mind that the values Saudi Arabia represents are the exact opposite of all the liberal, democratic, and social justice ideals that Friedman supposedly cherishes. The main thing for Friedman is that he sees the Saudis as the key to creating a “State of Palestine” in Israel’s backyard. And that seems to be Friedman’s all-consuming obsession.
In February 2002, Friedman drafted what he called “the Saudi Initiative,” a proposal for Saudi Arabia and other Arab states to recognize Israel in exchange for Israel retreating to the 1949 armistice lines, dividing Jerusalem, and creating a Palestinian state. Friedman flew to Riyadh, the Saudi leaders embraced the plan, and Friedman used his column as a platform to promote it.
But the ongoing mass violence of the Second Intifada eroded public sympathy for the Palestinian state idea. Just weeks after Friedman unveiled his “Saudi Initiative,” Palestinian Arab terrorists massacred 27 Jews at a Passover seder in Netanya. More than 1,000 Israeli Jews were murdered in the Second Intifada.
In 2017, former Palestinian Authority foreign minister Nabil Sha’ath revealed in an interview with ‘ON Television’ that the government of Saudi Arabia financed the Second Intifada.
In 2023, the New York Times exposed the fact that the Saudi security forces had recently slaughtered, mutilated, and sexually abused hundreds, perhaps thousands, of unarmed African civilians who approached the Saudi border in the hope of finding work or receiving asylum from persecution. Friedman wrote nothing about those Saudi atrocities.
Earlier this year, Friedman wrote columns praising the Saudis as moderates (June 23) and including them among what he called “decent countries, not all of them democracies.” (October 1) But nothing about the Saudis’ actual policies qualifies as “decent”—as the editors of Friedman’s own newspaper now seem to be acknowledging.
Sincerely
Prof. Rafael Medoff
Park East Pogrom
Dear Editor:
As a New Yorker and as a Jew, I remain horrified—and truthfully, deeply frightened—by the menacing mob that gathered outside Park East Synagogue on November 19th. What unfolded on East 67th Street was not a peaceful protest, nor an expression of political disagreement. It was a display of raw, unrestrained antisemitism directed at ordinary Jews simply trying to enter their house of worship.
The chants of “Globalize the intifada” and other explicit calls for violence echoed with a venom that should chill every decent person, regardless of faith or politics. To watch elderly congregants, children, and families forced to navigate a pathway of hatred in order to pray is something I never imagined I would witness in Manhattan. This is not the city we tell our children about. This is not the America my grandparents believed in when they fled persecution overseas.
What happened that night must be named clearly: it was intimidation, it was dangerous, and it was antisemitism in its most naked form. New Yorkers must not normalize this. Our leaders, too many of whom remained silent, must find their voices. Because if a synagogue can be surrounded and threatened in the heart of Manhattan, none of us can take safety for granted again.
Sincerely
Pearl Manheim
Manhattan