Promising Start
The “daylight” that existed between President Obama and Israel has turned into a new dawn with the election of Donald Trump and his Cabinet appointments.
Kenneth Levin’s brilliant recounting of recent history (“U.S. Policy and the Obama-Trump Transition,” front page essay, Dec. 16)) clearly illustrates that only the Jews and Israel have the biblical, legal, and historical claim to the land.
While broken promises litter the language and actions of past leaders, Americans can now breathe a huge sigh of relief that we finally have a president-elect who truly understands the “emes” regarding Israel. He has proven this by nominating David Friedman as U.S. ambassador to Israel.
Friedman outspokenly supports the moving of the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, as mandated in the 1995 U.S. Embassy relocation Act. He recognizes the absurdity of the “two-state solution” and supports the “settlements” in Judea and Samaria.
These are the same principles upon which Americans for a Safe Israel was created. We have been striving for them for over forty years. We are grateful to the president-elect for having the wisdom and understanding to select David Friedman for this critically important assignment.
Helen Freedman
Co-Executive Director
Americans for a Safe Israel/AFSI
Liberals And Conservatives
Reader David Fass (Letters, Dec. 16) questions whether there are studies to support the contentions in Dennis Prager’s Dec. 9 op-ed article, “10 Reasons Left-Wingers Cut Trump Voters From Their Lives.”
One item in particular – “there are more mean people on the left than on the right” – doesn’t need a study for confirmation. It’s self-evident.
Ever hear of conservatives demonstrating to get someone fired because he or she supports gay marriage? The cases of liberals pushing for the firing of someone because he or she believes that marriage should be between a man and a woman is quite common these days. If this isn’t mean-spirited, selfish, and intolerant, I don’t know what is.
On college campuses, it’s not uncommon for conservative speakers to be aggressively shouted down by liberals. Sometimes the liberal protests before the event can be so threatening that speakers will back out or be disinvited by the university. This kind of repugnant behavior among conservatives, however, is rare.
Even charity-giving habits point to the less-than-benevolent nature of liberals. And there are studies to back up that statement.
In a New York Times article several years ago, Pulitzer Prize winner Nicholas Kristof, a liberal, referenced data cited by author Arthur Brooks that shows “…households headed by conservatives give 30 percent more to charity than households headed by liberals. A study by Google found an even greater disproportion: average annual contributions reported by conservatives were almost double those of liberals.”
Kristof also cited a study that revealed “Liberals show tremendous compassion in pushing for generous government spending to help the neediest people .… Yet when it comes to individual contributions to charitable causes, liberals are cheapskates.”
In other words, liberals are very “generous” with other people’s money, but not their own. This exemplifies, in my opinion, a common thread among many liberal agendas: It’s more important to look good than to do good.
Josh Greenberger
Brooklyn, NY
Trump And The Environment
While there have been many recent articles and letters in The Jewish Press about Donald Trump’s election, one factor seems to be overlooked – the chances of averting a climate catastrophe have been greatly reduced.
Despite the fact that all of the 195 nations, including Israel, at the December 2015 Paris climate change conference agreed that immediate steps must be taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Trump has promised to tear up the agreement shortly after assuming the presidency.
He also has promised to repeal many of the recent U.S. initiatives to slow climate change and has made key appointments of people who are in denial about climate change, including a new head of the Environmental Agency, who has sued the EPA several times in efforts to reduce efforts toward a cleaner environment.
In addition, Trump ignores the strong consensus of scientists that global warming is largely due to human activities and is a major threat to humanity; he ignores that we are now in the third consecutive year of record temperature and all of the 17 warmest years worldwide since temperature records were first kept in 1880 have occurred since 1998; he ignores the view of the Pentagon and military experts that there will be tens of millions of desperate refugees fleeing droughts, wildfires, and storms, increasing the chances for instability, terrorism, and war; and he ignores the fact that glaciers worldwide and polar ice caps are rapidly melting, oceans are rising, deserts are expanding, storms are becoming more destructive, and wildfires are becoming more frequent and more severe.
In short, major positive steps are essential in order to leave a decent world for future generations, but these are unlikely to occur during a Trump administration. This is arguably the most critical issue facing humanity today, but far too many people are in denial, in effect rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic as we head toward a giant iceberg.
Richard H. Schwartz, Ph.D.
Staten Island, NY
Kudos To Harlem’s Old Broadway Synagogue
As a longtime Jewish activist, may I express “kol hakovod” to that venerable shul in Harlem, the Old Broadway Synagogue. Despite the synagogue’s own considerable financial challenges, members were so moved by the plight of the victims of the recent wildfires and arson in Israel that within two weeks congregant Moshe Jennings, with synagogue colleagues, organized a benefit concert on motzaei Shabbat, December 17, in the shul’s sanctuary.
The quartet of violinists and viola, all non-Jewish, warmly played Mozart and Jewish music. We concluded by standing and singing to the musicians’ rendition of “Hatikvah.”
The proceeds will be sent by Rabbi Allen Schwartz of Congregation Ohab Zedek directly to those in need in Israel. A true example of “Kol Yisrael areveim ze b’ze” – “All Jews are responsible for each other.”
Glenn Richter
New York, NY