Letters

Shallow views?

The S.F. Film Festival is featuring several anti-Israel "documentaries." Now, there's a shocker.

Bay Area audiences are being treated to films that mirror their shallow views of the Israel-Arab dispute.

It is too bad audiences will be deprived of an opportunity to have their world views challenged by a film that honestly looks at Palestinian society's embrace of the cult of martyrdom, or a film that reports on the Palestinian Authority's assault on Palestinian civil rights or how the authority does nothing about honor killings.

Every Israeli citizen is on the front lines of a terrorist war that is being prosecuted by the Palestinians, yet Israelis have the ability to contemplate their actions and make films critical of Israel.

Unfortunately, instead of acknowledging these facts and congratulating Israel on the strength of its open society, Israel's enemies will use these films to bludgeon Israel's reputation.

Maybe one day a Palestinian will make a film that puts Palestinian leaders and Palestinian society under the same microscope that Israeli filmmakers place Israel under. I submit that once the Palestinians start to engage in self-criticism, a real peace process can begin.

Joshua Baker | San Francisco




'Bold opening gambit'

Bravo to President Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for stating explicitly what had long been understood as an important goal of U.S. policy for peace and security in the region.

Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, while not a be-all-end-all, represents a bold breakthrough for the possibility of peace. The Palestinians now have a golden opportunity to determine a different path for their aspirations.

Palestinian refugees can and should be repatriated to a democratic, Palestinian state, living side by side with Israel in peace in security, in much the same way that 900,000 Jewish refugees who were kicked out of Arab countries between 1948 and 1967 were resettled in Israel proper.

Heaven knows, the old path of terror and rejection wasn't working for the Palestinians, and there clearly is a cost for their failure to fulfill security and governance responsibilities.

There is a steep price to be paid for inaction and inertia on the part of both parties. Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza is a bold opening gambit. One can only hope that the Palestinians will be able to seize the day.

Steve Lipman | Foster City




Terrorists' 'family honor'

Just confirmed where a 25-year-old Palestinian woman from the Balata self-imposed refugee camp was caught trying to blow herself up in a Fatah (Palestinian Authority-affiliated) suicide attack in Tel Aviv, after she was caught cheating on her husband.

Another, a 19-year-old girl from Nablus, was ordered to do the same after being caught "romantically involved before her marriage." 

I knew lust was one of the seven deadly sins, but I had no idea! They were ordered to carry out these despicable acts to rehabilitate the "family honor."

What kind of value system demands "family honor" by violent suicide and murder of as many innocents as possible?

Add these to the other children sent to their "child sacrifice" deaths by the likes of Yasser Arafat and Sheik Ahmed Yassin and it almost makes your run of-the-mill Mafia "family" psychopathic killer thugs look warm and cuddly by comparison, doesn't it?

Robert Katz | Cupertino




Willing executioners

President Bush does still not understand the Arab mind.

Aside from the fact that United States forces were unable to quickly come to the aid or strike back at those who perpetrated the brutal attack on the four foreign workers, the despicable acts were not the work of terrorists.

This is what the Bush team would like us to believe. It was the work of the willing population who side with the forces against Americans who claim they are bringing peace and democracy to a nation which cannot understand American ways.

If there were any righteous men or women in the crowd, they just stood by and allowed the brutality and atrocity to progress.

Just as there were "Hitler's Willing Executioners," described by Daniel Goldhagen, there are an abundance of Saddam's and Osama's willing executioners not only in Iraq but throughout the world, including the United States.

Bush will sooner than later get the word that we are just not wanted.

Norman Mann | San Diego




Arafat's 'fraud'

I write to commend your newspaper for your April 9 editorial in which you admitted that you were wrong about Yasser Arafat back in Oslo days. Unfortunately, many others still refuse to admit that they were wrong.

Those of us who saw that Oslo was a fraud simply paid attention to what Arafat was saying in Arabic to his fellow Arabs, whereas we saw that his utterances in English were addressed to the gullible, whose longing for peace was so great that they believed only what they wanted to believe.

Yehuda Sherman | Lafayette




'Managed care is to blame'

Your April 9 article "Is there a Doctor in the House?" misses the point completely. Fewer students of all denominations are looking into medicine.

Unfortunately, managed care is to blame. Declining insurance reimbursement to physicians is undermining medicine.

Insurance bureaucrats are dictating what can and cannot be done, routinely denying benefits and destroying sound medical practice throughout our country.

Insurance companies have taken over, and the brightest among us have taken notice.

Jewish students were always eager to provide a service as long as it provided a challenge and adequate reward. This is no longer the case.

Medical education is extremely complex and difficult. The rewards are now tenuous. We are witnessing the decimation of the finest medical system in the world, fueled by corporate greed and a complete lack of concern and vision from Washington.

Managed care is a business model designed to make maximum profits for insurance companies at the expense of the providers and patients.

Doctors are sacrificing 30 percent to 50 percent of their normal fees. Some doctors have begun to close their offices and students everywhere are paying attention.

Medicine and dentistry is degenerating before our eyes. God help us all.

Joe Armel, DDS | Mill Valley

Subject to interpretation

Rabbi George Gittleman writes that the prominent Jewish thinker of the 20th century, Emil Fakenheim, proposed the 614th commandment: "to survive" (April 16 j.).

Gittleman is mistaken. Fakenheim's famous post-Holocaust commandment is phrased this way: "Jews are forbidden to grant posthumous victories to Hitler."

This commandment, as all other 613 commandments, is subject to interpretation. Often it is interpreted as the forbiddance of assimilation.

Rudy J. Budesky | El Cerrito

'Don't roll your eyes'

I just read Jessica Ravitz's recent column and could not disagree with her more.

I have always found the music of Congregation Emanu-El beautiful, meaningful and spiritual. I find off-key singing and hand-clapping vapid, boring and frankly degrading to our beautiful musical tradition.

It's a shame that more young people in our movement, such as myself, do not appreciate the music of the Reform synagogue.

Having choral music does not mean ceding one's Jewish heritage to assimilation; as the column points out, there is a long history of Jewish music composed in a sophisticated idiom. It displays an appreciation of our own unique inheritance — that of Reform Judaism — an inheritance as pleasing to the mind theologically as to the ear melodically.

Choral music calls upon a different form of participation — that of the spirit and intellect working together. And yes, it requires a degree of musical appreciation that the guitar simply does not.

Next time you're in temple and the choir sings and the organ plays, don't roll your eyes, Jessica. Listen, think, meditate on the words and sounds of our liturgy. You might be moved closer to another understanding of how to "worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness."

Edward H. Wouk | Boston




Writing with heart

I read with great appreciation the March 19 column by Jay Schwartz. I felt that his writing had heart and spoke to me about a deeper current running through the experience of being Jewish, a current that one often discovers in silence.

Perhaps it is the artist's or philosopher's sensibility that I appreciate. However, I must say that I have often been disturbed by what I see represented of the Jewish community in j. I have noticed disconcerting attitudes in articles and letters that seem to be working extraordinarily hard to be "right," or to defend against threats, or to claim bragging rights (such as the celebrities column that talks about famous Jews who are highlighted simply for being Jewish rather than for accomplishments that exemplify Jewish values).

Are we special just because we're Jewish? I believe that this is one of the reasons that many Jews, myself included, feel so disaffected from organized Judaism.

As a community, perhaps we have forgotten how to listen, and how to talk to one another from our hearts about the simple struggles of being human, and, consequently, when we reach out, what we find has no substance, only volume.

Alan Helfen | Redwood City

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