BDS is a vicious movement that seeks the delegitimization, economic weakening, and ultimate destruction of Israel. It must be vigorously fought by the organized Jewish community. An “open tent” policy that would accord organizations that support it, or support other organizations that do, such approbation, is utterly misguided and intrinsically inconsistent with the waging of that accelerating struggle.
Richard D. Wilkins
Syracuse, NY
Demonizing Begin (I)
In her “Shiloh Musings” column posted at JewishPress.com on April 3, Batya Medad paints Menachem Begin as the father of appeasement because he first proposed the idea of Palestinian “autonomy.”
It should be recalled, however, that “autonomy” meant something far different to Begin in the late 1970s than it does to us today. No one in the Israeli mainstream circa 1978 was thinking along the lines of an independent Palestinian state. Why, then, does Ms. Medad feel the need to demonize the most intensely Jewish prime minister Israel has ever had?
Esther Friedman
(Via E-Mail)
Demonizing Begin (II)
Batya Medad’s web column on Menachem Begin was terribly unfair to Begin, and false too.
She wrote: “I’ll never forget the bombastic statements he made afterwards claiming that this decision will preserve Israeli rights to the rest of the Land of Israel….”
Here is her confusion, and I wonder if it’s deliberate. Sinai is not part of the Land of Israel. That was why Menachem Begin agreed to withdraw from Sinai in return for an agreement with Egypt – because he was not giving up any part of the Land of Israel, and he never did.
I also suggest that the move to give “autonomy” to the Arabs began several years before Begin became prime minister. In the early 1970s the ruling Labor party allowed – and indeed encouraged – Arab towns and cities to have elections to determine their mayors and other civic leaders. When the PLO candidates “convinced” the other candidates to drop out of the races, the PLO people became the legal spokesmen for all the Arab areas.
Finally, I notice a growing tendency by right-wingers not just to criticize Begin but to actually demonize him. In light of the facts, and the principles that he adhered to throughout his life, I find this inexplicable.
H.A. Cohen
(Posted on JewishPress.com)
Evidence And Evolution
In view of the lack of evidence for evolution, that it is still being advocated by some Orthodox Jews is indeed perplexing.
Despite 150 years of searching worldwide, paleontologists have given up hope of ever finding even one transitional fossil, let alone a single set to close the gaps between the phyla, classes or even species, to support the supposed evolutionary line. “Neither Darwin, nor any Darwinian has ever given an actual causal explanation of any single organism or any single organ” (Sir Karl Popper).
The stupendous myth of prehistoric men, missing link ape-men and man-apes is based entirely on the discretionary reconstruction of a very few, widely dispersed, bone shards. Java Man was found to have been based on an ordinary gibbon’s skull, Orce Man on a donkey’s skull, Ramapithicus on an orangutan, Pithecanthropus on an elephant’s knee cap. The sole evidence brought to support evolution and the existence of Nebraska Man, in the famous 1922 Scopes Trial, turned out to be the tooth of an extinct pig!
Entire imaginary phantom populations of supposed sub-humans – Cro Magnon Man, Neanderthal Man, Peking Man, Galley Hill Man, Fontechevade Man, Swanscombe Man, Grimaldi Man, Nutcracker Man, Olduvai Man, Wadjak Man, Leakey’s 1470 Man etc.etc. – are now acknowledged as being 100 percent true modern homo sapiens.
Piltdown Man was for 50 years ensconced in the textbooks as absolute proof of evolution until exposed as an expertly contrived hoax conceived at the highest levels.