The April 21 editorial, “PA’s real game: duplicity,” is a weak attack on the Palestinian Authority’s negotiation stance. The recently published Palestine papers show that the PA negotiated, in good faith, with prime minister Ehud Olmert and foreign minister Tzipi Livni in 2007-08. It was after they were replaced with the most intransigent, pro-settlement government in Israel’s recent history that negotiations bogged down. Indeed, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was excoriated by German Chancellor Angela Merkel for not having taken “a single step to advance peace.” Her sentiments, coming from the most pro-Israel nation in Europe, have been echoed by leaders around the world. You should be helping your readers to understand, rather than retreat into the stale attacks on the PA, which may have been appropriate when PA president Yasser Arafat ruled.
The PA refusal to negotiate while settlement expansion takes place is a response to the many Arab and non-Arab sources that excoriated the major compromises offered by President Mahmoud Abbas in 2007-08. A PA government that again sat down to protracted negotiations, while seeing its patrimony nibbled away, could not withstand the storm from its own people.
It is far more important for all of us in the Jewish community to understand that the burden is now on Israel to demonstrate its good faith. Netanyahu will have the opportunity this month, before a joint session of the U.S. Congress, to either offer a real peace plan, or the world will demonstrate its displeasure at the September meetings of the UN General Assembly, when the Palestinians seek recognition. Help your readers to understand that the growing criticism of Israel is not the result of clever and duplicitous Palestinians or a rising tide of antisemitism in the world. It is the Netanyahu-Lieberman coalition that is alienating world sympathy for Israel.
Stephen Scheinberg
Co-chair, Canadian Friends of Peace Now
‘Step up to the plate’
In “A monument of good deeds” (Perspectives, April 28), Eli Rubenstein is right to remind us that while so many “humans” acted with brutal cruelty and indifference during the Holocaust, there were others who were so innately good that they tested themselves to the point of risking their own lives as well as the lives of those most precious to them. We all share this human potential. It is incumbent upon each and every human being to make what we know in our hearts to be the right choice. If we do, we shall live up to that potential and will fulfil God’s expectations of us.
In her diary, 12-year-old Donia Rosen requested that in response to the Holocaust, we build a commemorative monument of good deeds. I suggest we now go one step further to lay a foundation for our continued success in the quest to reach the heights of that figurative pinnacle. Every time we recognize, appreciate, remember and honour the altruism of the past’s Righteous Gentile heroes, we all – Jew or gentile – “step up to the plate” in our present time and well into the future. What a legacy it would be for this generation to commemorate the enduring human potential for goodness that dwells somewhere in every human being.
Judy Clodman
Toronto
Men’s club’s program was fair
The April 21 letter, “Men’s club fails grade on democracy,” by Alberto Quiroz, deserves a response. The writer approached me at the conclusion of our federal candidates’ debate and apologized for writing the letter to The CJN. He said that Beth Tzedec Congregation’s Men’s Club had indeed presented a fair and inclusive program.
The fact that the club did not include the lesser parties in the debate did not result in those parties from being excluded from providing both a visual and oral presentation of their respective platforms. The club invited the Green party to present their candidate and platform, but the Greens chose not to attend.
Beth Tzedec Men’s Club has for more than 22 years won the acclaim of the major parties for providing an exemplary service to the community. We stand by our decision to include in our debates only the political parties that were featured on the nationally televised debates.
Larry Rachlin
Chairman, Beth Tzedec Congregation’s Men’s Club
Challenge lies of hate-mongers
Canadians for Israel’s Legal Rights, a new organization, will soon publish a clear and concise handbook – The Jewish People’s Rights to the Land of Israel – outlining the factual evidence for Israel’s title to the land. In offering this book, we are confident that students – and, in fact, anyone – will be armed with the historical, legal and political facts, and fully able to challenge the lies and malevolence of the hate-mongers in campus and elsewhere. For more information about the book, e-mail [email protected].
Goldi Steiner
Chair, Canadians for Israel’s Legal Rights
Toronto