Letters to editor: May 17, 2019

Letter to the editor:

The purpose of this letter is to respond to the opinion piece by Lewis Regenstein (my fraternity brother) that appeared in the Passover issue of the Atlanta Jewish Times.

In addition to Israel’s welfare, I care about the well-being of the country in which I am a citizen. I care about our positions on abortion rights, climate change, immigration reform, our ballooning debt and gun control, among other important issues. Every time I hear lies uttered by our president (which is multiple times a day), I am concerned that we are moving closer and closer to becoming a fascist country.

I have personally heard Trump state that we should consider having a president for life, that judges who impede his lawlessness should be removed from office and that journalists who expose his lies are the enemy of the people. All of these things were proposed by Adolph Hitler, and, remember, Hitler was elected by his supporters. He did not take over Germany in a coup d’état.

It is irrefutable that Trump has a clear preference for dictators and strongmen with the exception of Nicolas Maduro. It concerns me that he staunchly supports his good friend Vladimir Putin, whose government backs Israel’s arch enemies such as Syria and Iran. There’s no question in my mind that Trump would jump at the chance to muzzle his perceived enemies if given half the chance.

Trump’s “dog whistles” to the alt-right are well known and documented. They love him and have been emboldened by what they rightly read as his accommodative support for their beliefs. The result has been an exponential rise in hate crimes since his election, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

I come from a small, Southern town and can personally attest to the fact that the KKK hates Jews every bit as much as blacks. I remember watching Trump squirm and refuse to distance himself from David Duke, the former Grand Wizard of the KKK and noted Holocaust denier, when Duke heartily endorsed him during the campaign.

As Daniel Patrick Moynihan very astutely observed, “Everybody is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” I think there is ample evidence to state that while neither the Republicans nor the Democrats have a legitimate claim to be without their share of hypocrisy and warts, the Democrats are far from the bogey man Regenstein describes when it comes to their institutional position vis-a-vis Israel and the Jewish people. I consider myself both a satisfied Democrat and supporter of Israel even though I don’t agree with the positions of every member of the party.
Les Fuchs, Atlanta

Letter to the editor:

In the past two weeks Hamas at the behest of Iran rained rockets on Israel and in turn received a fierce retaliation. Democrats receive nearly 25 percent of their funds from American Jews. Who would you expect to condemn Hamas? Saudi Arabia or Congressional Democrats? If you chose choice 1, congratulate yourselves. The Congressional Democrats, including the 6th District backbencher and Congressional observer, Lucy McBath, and not one of 22 Democratic candidates for the presidency, said a word about this. But Saudi Arabia and several other countries condemned Hamas. To our delight, not one U.N. resolution condemning Israel or one Obama /Biden comment on measured response or moral equivalency.

Which party’s Congressional representatives condemned Israel in tweets? If you guessed Cortes, Omar and Tlaib of the Democrats, you would be right. Nancy Pelosi could not get a simple resolution condemning anti-Semitism through the House due to the reaction of progressive Democratic candidates for president and the Congressional Black Caucus. Instead we got a ridiculous resolution of ‘we hate all hate’ and in a list of every group claiming to be victim, someone hastily inserted anti-Semitism.

Jews are being shot in their synagogues as a reaction to Donald Trump’s pro-Israel agenda. Has our local representative Lucy McBath, who claimed she wanted to represent everyone in the district, still not condemned Louis Farrakhan or his supporters in Congress?

Maybe instead of a knee-jerk vote and donation to Democrats, you may want to consider the anti-Semitism we are all witnessing and check out who will be courageous and stand with American Jews and Israel.
Dr. Jeffrey A. Kunkes, Atlanta