A blatantly anti-Israel United Nations Human Rights Council endorsed the Goldstone report that accuses both Israel and Hamas of committing war crimes (“Goldstone make-over: Human Rights Council ignores Hamas,” Oct. 22). At a special session, 25 of the body’s members voted in favour of the resolution. Israel has flatly rejected the report as being factually incorrect but is still internally investigating the allegations made against it.
From time to time, various organizations attempt to organize a boycott against Israel, its citizens and its products. These attempted boycotts come from segments of the United Church, certain trade unions and various groups of academics in England and elsewhere.
The identity of the 25 countries that voted in favour of the resolution can be obtained on the United Nations website. It would be appropriate for Canadian Jews to boycott travel to those countries and stop purchasing their products.
Bert Raphael
Thornhill, Ont.

The old sayings, “Protect me from my enemies, I will protect myself from my friends,” and “With friends like this, we don’t need enemies,” are staring us in the face. I am referring to the Goldstone report on the war in Gaza, and even more damaging and dangerous, the outrageous approval and praise of intermarriage by Edgar Bronfman (“Intermarriage can benefit Jews, Bronfman says,” Oct. 22).
I cannot understand why The CJN would carry an item that so undermines the very fabric of Jewish survival. To Goldstone and Bronfman, I quote the recent words so eloquently spoken at the United Nations by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “Have you no shame? Have you no decency.”
Rabbi Moshe Stern
Toronto

“Who should get tzedakah?” (Oct. 1) is a column that foments dissent between haredi and other Jews. The column is disturbing and inappropriate on many different levels. Advocating the denial of educational tzedakah to haredi families “who refused to act so responsibly and have numerous children” contravenes many Torah teachings. In addition, according to the column’s logic, Jews of modest means should not be reproducing at all, as they would require a Jewish day school subsidy.
Everyone pays according to his means and need. The poor parents of one child may be subsidized as well as the “comfortable” parents of eight children. The recipients of tzedakah often repay the community in spades when they have the means to do so, and repayment may be in non-monetary ways as well. Resentment toward fellow Jews and withholding tzedakah for Jewish education are not policies that should be advocated in The CJN.
Marla Hauer
Thornhill, Ont.

It is too bad that Barbara Crook and Itamar Marcus, in responding to my article, “‘They’ are taught to hate” (Sept. 17), carry on with the tired old line that only the Palestinians are taught to hate (“PA textbooks deny Israel’s right to exist,” Oct. 15). They do not address the many studies of Israeli textbooks, done by scholars at Hebrew University, the University of Haifa and elsewhere, that found Israeli texts to be mirror images of those produced by the Palestinians.  
Crook and Marcus are only two of those engaged in the study of the Palestinian texts, and one should compare their findings to those of Prof. Nathan Brown of George Washington University, Ruth Firer of Hebrew University (with Sami Adwan of Bethlehem University) and that of the Israel/Palestinian Center for Research and Information. Their findings on the Palestinian texts are somewhat more optimistic.  However, I don’t doubt that both Palestinians and Israelis have a long way to go in cleaning up their texts, and that was the substance of my original article.
It is interesting to find in the Crook-Marcus critique itself charges against the Palestinians that could be easily levied against Israel. For example, some Palestinian maps do not show Israel. However, Israeli maps certainly do not show Palestine and, more to the point, most of them do not show the Green Line, Israel’s pre-1967 borders. As Prof. Yoram Bar-Gal of the University of Haifa’s department of geography ironically states: “My map is educational – your map is propaganda.” Palestinians do not grant recognition to Israel in their texts, but that is probably more of the lamentable tit for tat of the entire conflict. To paraphrase a Jewish thinker of the the first century, let the partisans of the nation without sin throw the first stone.
Stephen Scheinberg
Montreal