Letters

'Court of injustice'

By recommending that Israel dismantle its security fence, the U.N.'s International Court of Injustice gave rousing good news to Palestinian terrorists. 

The fence has greatly angered potential suicide bombers by making it much more difficult for them to casually walk into Israel and murder Israelis on buses, in cafes and on the street.

The High Court of Israel has decreed ways to minimize the fence's inconvenience to Palestinians. By contrast, the U.N. Court of Injustice apparently cannot distinguish between inconvenienced people, a situation that can be remedied, and murdered people, a condition that cannot be remedied.

The ICJ's decision was made by 14 judges from countries whose existence is never questioned, and whose citizens are not threatened daily. 

In spite of months of "research," apparently only the sole American judge recognizes the basic "evidence" that Israel's security fence went up because of Palestinian terrorist attacks; has dramatically cut down on terrorist incursions; and can and will come down when and if terrorist attacks stop.  

June Brott | Oakland




One-sided condemnation

Shamefully, the International Court of Justice has chosen to issue a one-sided condemnation of Israel's security fence, an issue completely outside its legal purview.

The fence is a movable barrier that will be removed once the security situation improves. Israel's own Supreme Court ruled last week that the fence should be rerouted to avoid needlessly inconveniencing Palestinians and Israel has taken great pains to accommodate this.

The fence has made it more difficult for Palestinian terror groups to operate with impunity. Is it 100 percent effective? Certainly not. But if you are an Israeli living in the towns like Hadera, Haifa or Jerusalem, even being 95 percent effective means your life is infinitely better than when human bombs were traversing the minimal distance between Israel's towns and the terrorist hotbeds of the West Bank.

With rare exceptions, not one major terrorist attack has been successfully launched from Gaza against Israel proper, in large part due to the fence surrounding the Strip.

Put bluntly, if there were no terror, there would be no need for the fence. This is the fence that Hamas and Islamic Jihad have built.

Steve Lipman | Foster City




Extremist settlers?

Who are the real extremists — the religious Jews who insist on their God-given right to live wherever they choose in the land of Israel, or the current Israeli government, which insists on its right to drive those Jews out of their homes and off their land by force, so the land can be surrendered to the Arab enemies?

By saying that any Jew who insists on living in Gaza is an extremist, the government is really saying that any Jew who insists on upholding the Torah is an extremist. Like the Hellenists of old, the political establishment is moving in the direction of declaring Judaism itself to be the enemy.

The struggle for the soul of the Jewish nation is coming into focus. It's not the right versus the left, but the believers versus the nonbelievers, and those who serve God versus those who serve idols.

The outcome will not be determined by who has the larger numbers or greater resources. Rather, victory will be granted to those who are most steadfast in their faith, and follow the core principles that have always been the very heart of Judaism: God, Torah and covenant.

Martin Wasserman | Sunnyvale




Message protested

I protest the message of Rabbi Pinchas Lipner's July 9 Torah column.

If the Torah is read literally, then atrocities — including murder — are sometimes rewarded by God. In the story of Pinchas, who murders Aimri and his female Midianite partner, God rewards Pinchas with a "Covenant of Peace" and ends the plague, which killed 24,000 Jews.

This story doesn't teach us Pinchas did the right thing but that the belief in a vengeful God using murder as a tool for the survival of the Jewish people is a dangerous, outdated view.

It is precisely this growing fundamentalist Judaism that is the greatest threat to the Jewish people everywhere.

Murder is never justified. So says a Commandment: Thou shalt not murder.

Pinchas was not acting in self-defense. Surely a God capable of killing the first-born children of non-Jewish Egyptian parents is capable of killing two adults if He dislikes the coupling of a Jewish man and non-Jewish woman.

The bottom line: The reasoning Lipner expresses is the same interpretation of zealotry used by Itzak Rabin's murderer, and by Orthodox Jews in Israel who stone other Jews breaking Sabbath laws. This zealotry in our own community must be challenged at every opportunity.

Max Perkoff | Mill Valley




Alternatives

I just got around to reading Jay Schwartz's June 11 column regarding faux b'nai mitzvot. Here's a thought. Is the use by gentiles of Jewish customs, etc., any more a threat to Judaism or Jewish families than domestic partnerships or marriages between same gender folks is a threat to "traditional" marriages or heterosexual married folks?

A solid marriage in the old school tradition will not be jeopardized by a gay wedding. Neither will my Jewishness be threatened because a gentile crushes a glass or signs a ketubah-like contract at his or her wedding. 

Indeed, I think we should be honored by the thought that others think our culture has something to offer.

Steven Saxe | Corte Madera




Saddened by death

I did not know nor had I even heard of Nikolai Mikhailovich Girenko until I read the June 25 j. article "Russian activist with Bay Area ties slain in St. Petersburg." Nonetheless, I am dismayed and saddened by this terrible act.

I can't express why I should feel so strongly about someone I only just heard of.

I had the same reaction when I heard the great Afghan freedom fighter Ahmad Shah Masood had been killed by a suicide bomber four days after 9/11 occurred.

There are always brave people doing brave things of whom I am completely ignorant. In a way, it makes me feel good to know that there are these people in the world. It is sad to learn of them only after their deaths. But history is like that. Even present history.

Ned Wynn | Healdsburg




'Herculean effort'

We'd like to thank Café de la Terrasse, the kosher café in the Richmond District, that recently closed after eight months of Herculean effort on the part of owner Jean-Paul Dan Zerdoun, with help from Carmen Law, Augustine, Daniel and their cooks.

The café was a unique place in Jewish life — a place for Jews to be together regardless of ethnicity, level of observance, politics, secular orientation and even the language they were speaking — any of the little niches people squirrel themselves into these days.

The café was home to the full Jewish spectrum — and where else can you find that?

We often found ourselves in casual conversation with people we didn't know, haredi as well as secular families.

These interactions prompted conversations with our daughter about who Jews are and what they believe, and gave my daughter a real sense of klal Yisrael.

Tracy Thomas and Todd Strauss | San Francisco




Narrowest view?

"Morality and Humanism," Edward Tamler's letter in the July 9 j., reveals a lack of knowledge of what humanism and humanistic Judaism represent. My dictionary defines humanism as "any system or mode of thought or action in which human interests, values and dignity predominates."

Humanism is a philosophy of life that emphasizes the importance of human power and human achievement. And it comes in two flavors: religious humanism and secular humanism. All humanists, regardless of orientation, share certain principles: truth, reality, power, ethics, personal freedom and democratic choice.

We secular humanists base our belief on these principles and the history and experience of the Jewish people. No one is born good or bad. Sociologists and scientists are still discussing the effects of environment, parental influence, and basic gene structure as to what makes each of us what he/she is and how each of us acts.

To insist that nothing else but a religious moral education can teach goodness is the narrowest of views possible.

The secular humanist Sunday school curricula will match any school's in its teaching of moral human values.

Bert Steinberg | San Francisco




Sidetracked?

Jonathan Bernstein writes correctly (July 9 j.) that Steve Greenberg's cartoon shows "how well-intentioned human rights activists ... have allowed their causes to excuse or condone anti-Semitism." Because our focus is always on the bottom line, though, we sometimes overlook opportunities for public relations efforts higher on the steps to hate. 

In fact, Greenberg's "10-step program" might better be converted to a more timely "12-step program" by inserting a couple of unrecognized steps that the activists must surely have taken before descending to the pit.

Following Step 2, "Concern for Oppressed Peoples," we might logically add "Concern for Holocaust Victims." From that new step, one might add "Concern for Holocaust Survivors." 

A true human rights activist must have suffered through those steps to bring himself to Greenberg's "Concern for Palestinian People." He must have suffered a great disconnect in his attempt to rationalize his transfer of compassion from the new safe haven for Jews to the Palestinian usurpers of our historic homeland.

Bernstein might be focusing on the disconnect rather than the bottom line, for the "true human rights activist" has already a history of suffering with our people.  He has just been sidetracked by someone else's PR programs.

Bernard A. Goldberg | Sacramento




letters policy

j. the Jewish news weekly welcomes letters to the editor, preferably typewritten. Letters must not exceed 200 words and must be dated and signed with current address and daytime telephone number. j. also reserves the right to edit letters. The deadline is noon Monday for any given week's publication. Letters should be sent by e-mail to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or by mail to j., 225 Bush St., Suite 1480, San Francisco, CA 94104.