Letters to the editor

Iran, Iran, Iran

By LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Letters (photo credit: REUTERS)
Letters
(photo credit: REUTERS)
Iran, Iran, Iran
After I read both “World powers hope for breakthrough as Iranian nuclear deadline arrives” (March 31) and Caroline B.
Glick’s “Managing Obama’s war against Israel” (Column One, March 27), I realized that Israel might well be saved from a bad deal only by its enemies.
Our supposed ally, the Americans, will sign any agreement the Iranians put in front of them, even if it endangers our existence. I say this because it has long been apparent that Iran is using these talks to continue to expand its nuclear weapon and ballistic missile programs, not rein them in.
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The genocidal Iranian theocracy wants an offensive ballistic nuclear weapon as soon as possible, as a threat to the world and as a means to destroy Israel. Sadly, its double game is going to leave the Middle East without an agreement to eliminate either its nuclear or missile capacities. Then Iran will be free to sponsor even more global terror, threaten both the West and the Sunni-Arab states, and perhaps even exterminate Israel.
How did we ever reach this state of affairs? KENNETH BESIG Kiryat Arba
Reader Barry Leonard Werner’s excellent letter “Dealing with Iran” (March 31) displays far greater insight than does Yossi Melman’s comment piece in the same issue, “Might the Iranian sword be at Israel’s throat?” It is ludicrous to say, as Melman does: “There is no existential threat to the Jewish state. Not even from Iran.” Apparently, he believes that with Israel’s highly developed weaponry, we would be able to withstand a nuclear attack. Even if this is so, at what cost? Another Hiroshima? In Terrorism: How the West Can Win, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu proposed a workable alternative that, while avoiding war, would bring Iran to its knees and most certainly not reward it in any way. What form of normalcy entertains the idea of negotiating with a party that openly advocates death to America? As Jews, we have learned from the beginning that our response to the threat “Kill the Jews” is to kill the one making the threat.
ALEX ROSE Ashkelon
US President Barack Obama is acting like the co-pilot who seems to have deliberately crashed the Germanwings airliner last week. By appeasing Iran, he is driving the world into a fatal descent toward nuclear war. Congress is knocking on the cockpit door, but to no avail.

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Congress should break down the door while there is still time.
MLADEN ANDRIJASEVIC Beersheba
New Olmert verdict
The guilty verdict for Ehud Olmert (“Court convicts former prime minister Olmert in Talansky retrial,” March 31) comes as no surprise. However, what was overlooked from the very onset is why New York businessman Morris Talansky would bribe Olmert in the first place, and on whose behalf.
Talansky is not a rich man. For most of his life he was a hired apparatchik for Shaare Zedek Medical Center. And while his salary and benefits were nothing to sneeze at, they did not give him the sort of “go to hell” money that would enable him to lavish hundreds of thousands on Olmert merely out of friendship.
So the question is, whose bag man was Talansky, and what favors were expected in return for outright bribery? It would now behoove the investigative authorities to look into Olmert’s conduct vis a vis American organizations that maintain a presence in Jerusalem in order to determine whether any of them show irregular real estate activity during his mayoral stint, and how such activity was finessed. After all, we know that Olmert was in the real estate business and that under his aegis, Jerusalem was for sale to the highest bidders.
YOHANAN AV-YAIR Jerusalem
Gazelle Valley
 I attended the opening of the Gazelle Valley Urban Wildlife Park (“Thousands attend grand opening of nation’s first urban nature reserve,” March 31). It was a joyful occasion.
How disappointed I was, therefore, when I saw your article.
I expected at least a picture of the event, showing people enjoying themselves. But no, your selection was very gloomy, to say the least.
Is this what readers want? RUTH SCHUELER Jerusalem
Apart from the many who turned out to see the Jerusalem park that has kept the space green instead of being built up , your photo of the two gazelles left me ecstatic. It was so natural.
The composition and the focus were both good. I am a photographer, so I should know.
HILARY GATOFF Herzliya Pituah
Eureka moment
On March 31, The Jerusalem Post had two interesting op-eds, one after the other: “I voted Likud” and “Creating an Israeli vision with no wars.” The first, by Beryl Ratzer, was factually based, the second, by Shimon Battat, fatuously based.
Reading Battat’s piece, I realized how foolish the world is to fight wars. So much more peaceful and healthier we would all be if we would only stop all these insane wars. Eureka! The piece would better have been titled: “Creating a worldbased vision with no wars.”
The Zionist Union has it right.
No more wars. Simple enough.
How foolish our voters were in passing up such a sensible choice.
AVIGDOR BONCHEK Jerusalem
Alpha, beta males
Is the question that Deborah Shulman poses in the second paragraph of “Detoxifying US-Israel relations” (Comment & Features, March 30) – “What can Netanyahu do in order to placate the White House and begin repairing this vital relationship?” – the right question? Does Ms. Shulman not make the case of US President Barack Obama, White House chief of staff Denis McDonough, the UN and herself, that if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not form a centrist government and help create a Palestinian State, Israel will be coerced into doing so by other means? Isn’t that a bit of the alpha male bullying the beta male? Shouldn’t Ms. Shulman have asked what the president of the US could do to coerce Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas into staying at the negotiating table, stopping anti-Israel/ anti-Jewish incitement in Palestinian schools, and showing Israel on its maps? Would these issues, posed and satisfied, bring Palestinian Arabs and Jews in Israel, Judea, Samaria and Gaza closer to a real negotiated peace?
DAVE RACKNER Ramot Hashavim
Letters about letters
Next time, reader Deena Spigelman (“Not on her table,” Letters, March 30) should not shoot from the hip and play the lack-of-sensitivity card.
There are plenty of people these days, both religious and secular, who do not eat meat at the Seder, or indeed ever. So while she knows perfectly well that Ben & Jerry’s haroset ice cream clearly is not suitable for her Seder table, why does she think it’s right to disqualify it from the tables of others? PETER SIMPSON Jerusalem I concur with the writers of the letters about the lethal potential of electric and other bicycles (“Regulate e-bikes... and the others,” March 30). A year ago, I wrote to the paper about this menace, but it seems the authorities did not deem the situation worthy of legislation.
While on holiday in Britain, I was riding in a car through Oxford, where there were hundreds of university students cycling down the streets. Not one was on a sidewalk.
I expect that if cyclists were to ride on the roads here, drivers would complain. There would also be more accidents.
SALLY SHAW Kfar Saba