Letters to editor: February 1, 2019

Letter to editor:

Dave Schechter’s wise suggestion that we perform due diligence about the women’s march returned unnerving results.

MEMRI [Middle East Media Research Institute] reported that last month Ms. Sarsour apprised us of this interesting information regarding what underlies issues claimed by the Women’s March: “We don’t need a workers’ rights movement or an environmental justice movement. We don’t even need a Black Lives Matter movement, because our religion has taught us that black lives mattered way before there was ever a hashtag, or a movement, or people protesting outside on these streets. Our religion has always been an anti-racist, feminist, and empowering religion. I don’t need people in the West, or people in Europe, or people in the United States of America, to teach me what feminism is.”

Ms. Sarsour also offered this thought: “I will declare to all of you here in Sacramento that Jerusalem is and always will be the capital of Palestine.”

In November, Ms. Sarsour tweeted her condemnation of “folks who masquerade as progressives but always choose their allegiance to Israel over their commitment to democracy and decency.”

It is useful to know that, as far as Ms. Sarsour is concerned, those who support Israel fail to “intersect” with decency and democracy.

Today’s anti-Semites target Jews through Israel. Young Jewish adults in colleges face ridicule and shunning unless they subordinate their Jewish identity and interests to the toxic fraud of “intersectionality.” The result is that many young Jews are afraid to raise their voices on behalf of Israel. We need to arm them with information in order to prepare them for what they are increasingly likely to encounter in these troubled times.

Julia Lutch, Davis, Calif.

Sources: www.memri.org/reports/palestinian-american-activist-linda-sarsour-prophet-muhammad-was-human-rights-activist-we; www.dailywire.com/news/38455/intersectionality-leads-ignoring-anti-semitism-ben-shapiro

Letter to editor:

Dave Schechter is correct — Jews need to be careful in deciding with whom they’ll stand. Far from using “intersectionality” to create a big tent, Israel’s enemies are following a long-held pattern of demanding the support of others while doing little to reciprocate.

Consider the history of relations between Israel and the nations of sub-Saharan Africa. Beginning in the mid-1950s, Israel assisted countries such as Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Ivory Coast in establishing agricultural cooperatives, setting up youth training programs, building medical infrastructure, and creating joint industrial enterprises. Yet, after the Yom Kippur war, those nations bowed to the demands of the Arab nations in the Organization of African Unity and sent the Israeli technicians home. Arab technicians never replaced the Israelis. Having achieved their goal of depriving Israel of praise for its efforts, the Arab states were content to let Black Africans suffer.

In declaring that Zionism and feminism can’t mix, people like Linda Sarsour show they’re more interested in co-opting all groups – whether concerned with reproductive rights, equal pay for equal work, sexual harassment, domestic violence, or any other matter – into anti-Zionism than in lending support for anything not related to delegitimizing Israel.

Toby F. Block, Atlanta

Letter to editor: Where are Visionaries to Muster the Defeat of Tyrants?

There can be no doubt that we are ruled by a sociopath, a lethal megalomaniac.

The air is full of condemnation. Yet, how much serious contemplation and calling are there for the angry populace to cry out “Enough tyranny talk! What can we do to nullify this toxicity before it destroys us? How do we muster the will to rise up in righteous indignation and stop this evil in its tracks?”

We have in the U.S. overthrown the evil designs of evil people by the rising up of indignant masses, not by physical violence, but by passion so strong that it cannot be ignored. In the last decades we have sparked the rise of civil rights to defeat racist bigots and misanthropes in our homeland and called the halt to a vicious war in Far East Asia. Just a couple of examples of the wonders that can be achieved by masses of right-minded people.

The quest must start by identifying a visionary, articulate voice that calls charismatically to decency and honor, framed by motivation of the hoi polloi. Where is that visionary, charismatic leader to muster us to action?

Now, get off your behinds and take action, whatever it might be, to defeat the maniacs who forcefully mislead us! Protest! Write letters to the decisionmakers! Beat on the doors of legislature! March on Washington and Mar-a-Lago! Shout so loud that the media, local and national, cannot ignore us.

I, for one, have featured myself as having talent at mustering the muster-able. The record will show that I have had considerable success at that calling. But I still live with no delusion that so much work still must be done. Each to his/her own special gift and strength: Habitat for Humanity. American Red Cross. National Children’s Cancer Society. Everything that leaves a taste of altruism in the conscience.

So where is the next MLK? The next JFK? The next Rustin or Marshall? The next Churchill? Surely our generation can put forth just one compelling individual to galvanize the energy of the masses to take action.

Detractors will likely call me just an aged-out hippie casting a longing eye back to the 60s. They will try to outshout with “Your vision is no better than ours! Your pining for an outlived reality is un-reality!”

No! Do not let them discourage or detract you! Action, my friends! Now, who among us will muster the masses to an uprising of positive initiative, through leadership of an irresistible, charismatic cry?

Will we then defeat the megalomaniacs and their minions from their terror and free us to resume building the Land of the Free?

Rabbi Marc H. Wilson has returned from four months of paralysis and other things dreaded!

Rabbi Moshe Chayim Wiludjanski-Wilson, Greenville, S.C.