Women Should Guard Their Eyes Too
Regarding Rabbi Ben Tzion Shafier’s response to the question: Is it proper to go to a water park?
While I admire Rabbi Shafier and usually agree with his opinions, I disagree with his suggestion that it is perhaps permissible for a frum woman to take a young child to a mixed-gender water park. Besides exposing her child to scenes he or she should not see, the woman herself is being exposed to improper sights. While men and women have different natures to a certain degree, it’s obvious from Tanach and secular psychology that women too have a yetzer hara. Further, shemiras einayim is not limited to men, just as tznius is not limited to women.
I hope and pray that in the zechus of being careful about such matters, we will bring Mashiach soon.
Robert Markowitz
Brooklyn, N.Y.
The ICC Farce
Re: “Col. Richard Kemp: Hague Judges Mulling Netanyahu’s Arrest Warrant Do Hamas’s Bidding” (August 20): The ICC continues to push for issuance of arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant in a blatant display of antisemitism. Apparently it is illegal to defend against unprovoked barbaric attacks against your country’s civilian population. Statistics from the Hamas health ministry are constantly cited when referencing the number and nature of casualties of “innocent Gazan civilians.” The same ones that crossed the breach into Israel to murder, rape, behead, and pillage right alongside the Hamas monsters. Statistics that cannot be verified and have been debunked by prominent statisticians.
That being said, Israel is the only country to take significant measures to minimize casualties. Truth be told, however, a preponderance of the Gazan population supported the actions of Hamas and would gladly murder Jews and Israelis. Antisemites all around the world refer to Israel’s war of self-defense as genocidal activity and call for a ceasefire. What a farce.
Where is the ICC arrest warrant for Putin and the calls for a ceasefire in the Ukrainian-Russian conflict that has been ongoing for three years? Where is the call for arrest warrants for all the dictators of the world that are responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of people? Furthermore, where is the enforcement of simple common decency on college campuses and in general? The world has descended into moral decadence where good is evil and vice versa. May Hashem bring the geulah quickly without pain so that He may uncover His face and we may finally experience His greatness and goodness.
George Weiss
Brooklyn, N.Y.
Why No U.S. Pressure On Terrorists?
Re: Biden Pressures Netanyahu to Show ‘More Flexibility’ in Hostage Talks” (August 22):
Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah all threaten revenge against Israel for killing terrorist leaders. Where are the admonishments from the Biden administration to these heinous terrorists not to retaliate so as not to escalate the violence? There’s nothing but deafening silence. It’s only when Israel defends itself that we hear the phony Biden administration go on about restraint, as if they care about human casualties. It seems they don’t consider Israeli casualties important enough to be concerned about.
Josh Greenberger
Brooklyn, N.Y.
Questions For Kamala
Re: “Six Minutes of Kamala Harris” (op-ed, August 2): Because Vice President Kamala Harris has been too cowardly and deceptive to take questions from the press corps, and because the media have, in turn, been flacking for her rather than doing their jobs, we thought it would be helpful to post our questions here that she needs to answer.
- In the past, she clearly endorsed “mandatory” gun buy-backs, a socialized government single-payer healthcare system, packing the Supreme Court with ideological justices, a federal job guarantee that could cost taxpayers up to $2 trillion per year, and a ban on fracking. Now her campaign aides say those are not her positions. Has she changed her mind on each of those, and if so, will she please explain why and also why voters should believe she is committed to her new positions? Will she unequivocally commit not to reverse herself again on any of those new positions?
- The Democratic Party platform includes amnesty for the 10 million illegal immigrants in the United States since the day Harris became vice-president. What does she plan to do with the four million illegal immigrants her administration caught and released into the U.S.? Will she deport them, as former President Donald Trump did, or give them amnesty along with all the other illegal immigrants? Because she and her party have committed to providing welfare, Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security to all those immigrants, how, with specific math, does she propose to have taxpayers pay for it all?
- Harris has embraced the Biden-Harris administration’s tax proposals, including massive hikes on corporate income taxes. Yet since Republicans cut those taxes in 2017, the job-producing economic activity the cuts spurred brought in nearly twice as much revenue from corporate income taxes, from $230 billion to $410 billion. Why does she want to reverse this successful policy?
- Her Democratic platform, in several places, pledges to “end special interest giveaways,” but the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation reports that her dishonestly named Inflation Reduction Act gave $650 billion over 10 years to politically powered banks, left-leaning industries that produce little, and even Chinese firms. Even the liberal Washington Post reported that Harris’s vaunted “Infrastructure Law” has built only seven electric charging stations in two years despite spending $7.5 billion. Why are her giveaways apparently exempt from her platform’s promised crackdown on special interests?
- When Harris’s administration took the power to “negotiate” or dictate prices to pharmaceutical companies, critics in this publication and elsewhere repeatedly warned that the policy would hamper research and development of new drugs, and there would thus be a “reduction in cures” for sick people.” Now, straight news reports show that is what is happening, with research and innovation dropping sharply and companies slashing thousands of jobs. Harris now promises to expand this drug “negotiation” program, but how will she account for the slowdown in new cures that her program causes?
- Even as Minneapolis was still smoldering in 2020 after violent riots that Harris’s running mate, Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), refused for four days to stop, and as 19 people died nationwide in riots that caused billions of dollars of damages, Harris encouraged protestors to continue throughout the year and beyond and advocated releasing even accused murderers and rapists pending trial, a cause for which she continues to fundraise. Harris’s campaign still says she wants to end bail requirements. She and her running mate both have supported movements to defund police departments. Apart from her long-ago job as a prosecutor, what actual policy choices does Harris advocate to convince voters she will be tough enough on crime?
- Why did she insist for so long that President Joe Biden was competent to serve four more years when it was obvious for many months, if not years, that he was incapable of fulfilling the heavy requirements of the job of president?
Voters deserve answers to all these questions.
Brian Goldenfeld
Oak Park, CA
Jewish Liberals Cling To The Past
There was a time when seeing a prominent Jewish name, or even a Jewish-sounding name, in the newspaper evoked a source of inner pride. It showed that we had made it, we had arrived, and were accepted within the larger society. Disturbingly, in today’s divisive environment, whenever I see a prominent Jewish name in the media, in any field of endeavor, whether politics, science, entertainment, or journalism, I initially cringe, because I am reasonably certain that it is not in a context that I feel is favorable.
The name of Ilan Goldenberg, an Israeli-born Jew picked as Kamala Harris’s Jewish advisor, is the latest example. (“Harris’s New Jewish Advisor Is No Friend Of Israel,” August 23). He joins a long list of prominent Jews who are left to far left on the political spectrum. In the spirit of wokeness and intersectionality, it means they join the antisemitic or anti-Israel and pro-Palestinean movements in overt action, if not in inner feeling. Names like Bernie Sanders, Chuck Shumer, Adam Schiff, Jeff Bezos, Barbra Streisand (Yentl herself), and Thomas Friedman, evoke a feeling of revulsion now – not pride.
To make matters worse, even the Jewish leaders of major Jewish organizations have succumbed to the lure of political wokeness at the expense of their stated role as Jewish leaders. Who can forget the infamous declaration of ADL head Jonathan Greenblatt in 2016 when he vowed he would “register as a Muslim” just to spite then President Trump’s threat to impose travel bans on Muslims? It sometimes seems that Jews are their own worst enemy.
I am neither equipped nor willing to enter into a psychological discussion of their profiles, but I’m sure at least part of it lies in the historical propensity of Jews to be more liberal and caring then those in many other religions. It seems to be embedded in the psyche or even DNA of Jews, going back to the Torah teachings in biblical times, and continues up to the present time. I well remember the Jews holding President Roosevelt up as a saint or even a G-d-like figure, even though he didn’t lift a finger to help the Jews during the blackest days of the Holocaust. Even now, over 70 % of Jews consistently vote Democratic, which they still perceive as more liberal than the Republican party.
The problem today I think is not that the Jews have veered more to the left, but rather that the Democratic party has clearly and openly moved much further to the far left, spearheaded by the radical left wing of the Democratic party and the active participation of the mainstream media. They are all now solidly antisemitic, anti-Israel, and pro-Palestinian, but most Jews have not yet accepted this reality, and are still clinging to the Roosevelt era illusion.
With the steady distancing of the Democrats from support of Jewish and Israel causes, and the explosion of antisemitism, anti-Israel, and pro-Palestinian sentiment after October 7, the 2024 U.S. election comes as a watershed moment for the future of American Jews and Israel. Continued divergence of American and Jewish interests poses an existential threat to both our futures.
Max Wisotsky
Highland Park, N.J.
