Letters, May 13, 2011
Reaping the rewards of martyrdom
WHAT happens now?” your front page headline asks below the picture of Osama bin Laden (AJN 06/05) Why, straight to paradise where 72 virgins await.
Henry Herzog
St Kilda East, Vic
Hypocrisy over targeted assassinations
I FAIL to understand why the suspected Israeli assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai is different to the US killing Osama bin Laden. Both terrorists had been involved in the murder of many innocents, yet only Israel is criticised for the similar killings, while the US is applauded. Can someone please explain the logic involved?
Further, following the US killing of Osama bin Laden, the head of the Hamas administration in the Gaza Strip, Ismail Haniyeh, condemned the event as the assassination of an Arab holy warrior.
This statement, grouped with the war crimes committed against Israel, exposes Hamas as the terrorists they are, and they should be dealt with accordingly. Furthermore, any UN resolution supporting the proposal that Hamas be allowed a state, is simply furthering terrorism.
Philip Rothschild
Caulfield North, Vic
Terrorism is a choice not an imperative
I WRITE as an American; I write as a Jew.
I sobbed with grief on “9/11” at the feral murder of 3000 civilians – Americans and not; Muslim, Jew, Christian and all. I simultaneously chastised my country for actions that contributed to that attack – including funding bin Laden and Taliban-precursors in their resistance against the then-Soviet Union.
Yet I’m tired of reporters, editorialists, and letter-writers who sweepingly blame America and Israel for all the world’s ills.
Yes, America could have withdrawn support from authoritarian dictators of oil-producing nations years ago, but American support is not the “cause” of their authoritarianism – it’s “their choice”.
Yes, Israel could have made peace with Palestinians decades ago – yet it was the PLO’s “choice” to use terrorism early and throughout its campaign; it was their “choice” to articulate their intention to destroy Israel and kill Jews.
I’m not naive about the ugly side of American (and Israeli) policies; my work and research bring me close to information the average person doesn’t get.
Playing the blame game is cheap and easy, and doesn’t disrupt our relaxed and comfortable existence. Let’s stop blaming America and Israel for choices other nations, other peoples, other governments make for themselves. Let’s look at ourselves, our lifestyles, and our own governments, and address our own complicity with governments and peoples that make life a “terror” for their own citizens.
Judy Bamberger,
O’Connor, ACT
Disturbing support for bin Laden in Muslim world
THE most disturbing aspects of Osama bin Laden’s elimination is that Muslims in Pakistan, Egypt, the UK and other places protested against the US and dished out threats of revenge. Some Australian Muslims gave interviews, claiming that the US is a bigger terrorist than bin Laden was. An MP in New Zealand was forced to retract his words of admiration towards bin Laden after the successful US mission. It seems that the Muslim extremists and their sympathisers did not learn from history in the same way as the Germans did after liberation from the evil Nazi monsters.
Gabor Ujvari
Caulfield, Vic
Double standards in reaction to terror
ON the morning it happened, a Muslim caller to a radio station commended the action of the US in killing Osama bin Laden, but lamented the death of Yasser Arafat. The following day, the front page of The Age quoted President Obama declaring, “Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader; he was a mass murderer of Muslims.”
Therefore, I can only conclude that the favourable reaction of components of the Islamic world to the death of Osama bin Laden cannot necessarily be taken as an expression of support for western values, because unlike some other jihadist organisations, al-Qaeda made a point of also targeting other Muslims.
Islamic terrorist activities perpetrated against non-Muslims are never met with the same condemnation by the Muslim community, either here or abroad. We also know that Palestinian terrorists are lauded as freedom fighters, even by the Palestinian Authority which names public institutions after them. So it all depends who you kill – and it seems that Jews are a bonus.
Alan Freedman
St Kilda East, Vic
Offended by front page picture of terror chief
I WISH to protest to your glorifying the person you displayed on the front page of The AJN (06/05). By doing so, you are only glorifying him and giving his followers the opportunity to make him into the martyr. Please cease from putting a photo of such people onto our paper. Why would a Jewish paper put on its front page such a person whose only goal in life is the destruction of Israel, the USA and the Jewish people, when there is enough information about his demise around the world?
Please by all means put a photo on the paper of the likes of the President of the US or Israel’s Binyamin Netanyahu, but why such a person who hid from the world and caused so much terror?
Judy Levron
Caulfield, Vic
Connection between Hitler and bin Laden
SPOT on, Philip Rothschild. (AJN 06/05). The announcement of the deaths of Adolf Hitler and Osama bin Laden on the same calendar day is no coincidence. Both are scions of the primeval archenemy of civilised mankind, Amalek.
This connection can readily be demonstrated in the holy Hebrew tongue. Using the science of gematria and transliterating the names Hitler and Osama bin Laden phonetically, the numerical values of each adds up to an identical 244.
Moreover, adding the total number of letters in the word Amalek (four) to the numerical value of the word Amalek – also a legitimate and recognised form of gematria – will likewise yield 244. The odds against this occurring randomly or coincidentally are astronomical.
Spine-tingling stuff!
On another matter, the view of Judaism on same-sex marriages and unions is well known. However, that apart, many of your readers will have read your sensationalist headline “Wentworth majority for gay marriage” (AJN 22/05)) without digesting the small print.
The baptised Lord Disraeli may have been a distinctly unkosher Jew, but it is to him that we owe the redolent but very accurate phrase “lies, damned lies and statistics”!
The number of Wentworth constituents canvassed was 2333. There are more than 100,000 voters on the Wentworth electoral roll. That is apart from the many adult residents of Wentworth ineligible to vote. In other words, considerably less than two per cent of Wentworth residents of voting age were represented.
Does anyone honestly believe that on the basis of a two per cent response one may legitimately declare that “more than 72 per cent of people support same-sex marriage”?
Rabbi Chaim Ingram
Bondi Junction, NSW
Beware the white-painted raven
WE have watched the riots and the aftermath in Egypt. We have also learned that a great portion of the parties that have taken over want to get rid off the decades-old Egypt-Israel peace agreements.
Now, Hamas and Fatah have signed their unity pact in Cairo, even though Hamas will still not accept the right of Israel to exist, more than 60 years after its establishment.
We are therefore not surprised that most of the Israelis, the Government and we in the Diaspora regard the Hamas-Fatah unity agreement as a front to legitimise the rockets, possible new suicide bombings and attacks against the innocent everyday citizens of Israel.
We hope that the peace-loving world together with Israel will watch this new development in Cairo and will not be fooled by a white painted raven with an olive branch in its beak.
Tom Sinclair
Bondi Junction, NSW
Senseless support for New Israel Fund
WHILE I submit entirely to Professor Gerald Steinberg’s judgement of Naomi Chazan (AJN 29/04), one must consider his qualified comments regarding the president of the New Israel Fund (NIF) as a clear rebuttal of Robin Margo’s (AJN 22/04) endorsement of some of the NGOs heavily funded by NIF involved in the vilification of Israel through their contribution to the Goldstone Report.
To be sure, while Israel is a vibrant democracy, the implicit purpose of the Goldstone Report, as well as that of those NGOs active in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign, also financed by NIF, irresponsibly contribute to the undermining of the same democracy in Israel.
It seems Robin Margo chooses not to distinguish between “democratic rights” and democratic wrongs, a position to which David Knoll (AJN 29/04) also subscribes with the kind of added enthusiasm for Naomi Chazan’s virtues that requires severe curbing. Indeed, as Henry Herzog’s (AJN 29/04) reaction not so subliminally indicates , the main thrust of the entire pro-Chazan advocacy is essentially an argumentative proxy with due compliments from the Progressive Judaism barricades. Now the whole senseless enthusiasm makes sense.
Otto Waldmann
Bondi Junction, NSW
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