Obama And Terrorism
Reader Eli Grossman (Letters, July 15) quotes statistics (the number of terrorists killed by the U.S. over the past several years, etc.) cited by journalist Peter Bergen as evidence that Obama is not the pro-Muslim pacifist some on the Right claim he is.
I would point out, however, that upon the publication in 2014 of a slanderous book about Israel by the virulently anti-Israel writer Max Blumenthal, the same Peter Bergen offered effusive praise for both Blumenthal and his screed (which the left-wing writer Eric Alterman panned as something that “could have been published by the Hamas Book-of-the-Month Club”). And we’re to believe Bergen has integrity?
Iran is the world’s foremost sponsor of terror and Obama facilitated development of an Iranian nuclear weapon and released $150 billion to the Iranians. I don’t have to call the president or anyone on the Left any names, Mr. Grossman, but I would love to hold all of them responsible for the consequences of Obama’s actions.
Ben Feigenbaum
(Via E-Mail)
Elie Wiesel’s Legacy (I)
I was very moved by Alan Dershowitz’s article about his friend Elie Wiesel (“Elie Wiesel: My Colleague, My Friend,” op-ed July 15).
There was only one Elie Wiesel. He helped keep alive the memory of the Holocaust. He protested genocide and atrocities in Biafra, Darfur, Rwanda, Cambodia and elsewhere. He was a great person. Millions have read his books. His memory and his writings live on.
Reuven Solomon
Forest Hills, NY
Elie Wiesel’s Legacy (II)
Elie Wiesel, in his roles as chairman of the President’s Commission on the Holocaust and as founding chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, fought a long battle against those who wanted to make Washington’s United States Holocaust Memorial Museum less “ethnocentric” and more “inclusive.”
The story of Wiesel’s valiant fight to ensure that the museum would first and foremost tell the story of the genocide of the Jews is told in great detail in Edward Linenthal’s 1995 book Preserving Memory: The Struggle to Create America’s Holocuast Museum.
Back in February 1979, when the Holocaust Commission met for the first time, Wiesel set the tone with his searingly eloquent remarks, declaring:
We have been entrusted with an awesome legacy, and we are being judged by invisible friends, brothers, teachers, parents – and they are all dead. And they all had but one wish, to be remembered. As we begin out proceedings, we hear the Kaddish of a community somewhere in Ukraine, a community that did not live long enough to complete the prayer. We hear the whispers of thousands and thousands of human beings, walking in nocturnal processions toward the flames…. We hear the battle orders of ghetto fighters. We hear the mute laments of abandoned children. We hear Bergen-Belsen. We hear Treblinka, and we hear Chelmno. And we are seized by Maidanek. We shiver because of Auschwitz and we burn because of Auschwitz.
Who but Elie Wiesel could have written and spoken with such poetic majesty?
Trudy Robbins
(Via E-Mail)
Ginsburg And Trump
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg recently made highly inappropriate remarks for someone in her position about Donald Trump, setting off a firestorm of criticism.
Ginsburg subsequently apologized for what she said. But Donald Trump has often (too many times to count) made highly inappropriate – even quite vulgar and demeaning – remarks about people and groups. Has he ever apologized? Even once? Not that I’m aware of.
I can’t say I’m surprised; I once heard him asked in an interview what he thought of atonement. He replied, in so many words, that he thought atonement was a good thing but that he himself has nothing to atone for.
What I learn from Ginsburg’s comments is that we should be very careful of what we say and the context in which we say it. What I’ve also learned from her is that if you make a big mistake with something you’ve said, find words of contrition and apologize.
I’m still wondering what I can learn from Donald Trump.
Alan Howard
Brooklyn, NY
Smearing Trump
Sara Lehmann’s interview with Trump aide Jason Greenblatt in her “Right Angle” column (July 8) was excellent.
My June 3 letter to the editor in support of Trump was subsequently criticized by reader Michael Buchsbaum (Letters. June 10), who questioned the “delay” in Trump’s distribution to veterans of $6 million that had been raised at a Trump event. It is this kind of criticism of Trump, along with manufactured issues like Trump University, that has turned the presidential campaign into something of a circus.
The bottom line for me is that I absolutely do not trust Hillary Clinton to be a strong, loyal partner to Israel. Clinton will promise everything at AIPAC and Hadassah gatherings but if elected will pivot back to the usual State Department positions that have been hostile to Israel for decades – since before the actual creation of the state, in fact.
The recent attempts to portray Trump as anti-Semitic are heavy-handed smears offered up to gullible Jewish voters who, unfortunately, seek any reason to vote for Democrats.
How can Jewish Democratic voters fail to see that the Democrats are no longer the party of “Scoop” Jackson, LBJ, and so many others we could trust?
Myron Hecker
New City, NY