By LETTERS TO THE EDITORLetters(photo credit: REUTERS)Parental controlSir, – Regarding “Girl fights for life after Samaria firebomb attack” (December 26), is there any way to effectively end the violence against our people by Palestinian adults as well as children? The Palestinian Authority incites violence against all Israelis, and many Palestinians, including youngsters, respond accordingly. Yet we react according to our civilized rules, sometimes finding and arresting the perpetrators and releasing them if underage.It’s time for us to severely punish the families of these young terrorists by destroying their homes or rescinding their citizenship if they are Israeli Arabs.They mean to kill and injure.They succeed all too frequently.The parents of underage terrorists will control their offspring only if they know that their homes will be destroyed if their children are caught.RON BELZERPetah TikvaUNRWA’s dutySir, – With regard to “One for the Guinness Book of Records: The myth of an UNRWA policy of peace that does not exist” (Observations, December 26), the United Nations Relief and Works Agency has a duty to be neutral and apolitical in respect to the Israeli-Arab conflict.
This is particularly true when it comes to UNRWA’s investment in the education of Palestinian youth and its vetting of staff members to ensure that their agenda is not the same as that stated in the Palestinian National Charter and the Hamas Charter: the destruction of the State of Israel.PETER WISEBURGHJerusalemLeader by defaultSir, – I felt like I had been punched in the gut after reading Charles Bybelezer’s “In search of an Israeli leader” (Comment & Features, December 25).No one is spared as Bybelezer lists the major faults of each potential candidate for prime minister. It seems that the responsible course of action would be for a voter to choose the party of the potential leader who is likely to cause the least damage.It is clear that he considers Tzipi Livni the most dangerous and, as a consequence, she has taken Labor Party leader Isaac Herzog down with her. Once again we are left with a leader by default – which explains the current state of this country.ALAN (SHLOMO) KOORPetah TikvaContext indeedSir, – In his spirited defense of Uri Lupolianski (“The Lupoliansky case – a test for Israeli society,” Comment & Features, December 23), Rabbi Shmuel Jakobovits asserts that context is everything when evaluating human behavior.Indeed, no human action or activity is inherently righteous or inherently evil; it all depends on context. But he fails to adhere to his own standard.He asserts that Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv “recognized that there are in our world... genuine people of hesed....” But he fails to note the context of this recognition: the impending trial of a haredi politician. He would be hard pressed to find evidence that Rabbi Elyashiv would likewise defend a non-haredi individual, secular or religious, as a paragon of righteousness under any circumstances – and certainly not if that individual had already been tried and convicted in a court of law.Worse yet, Rabbi Jakobovits fails to note that the context Judge David Rozen used to evaluate the criminality of Lupolianski was not established by the judge but by the haredi community, which long ago forfeited its claims to righteousness, having decided to exchange its ethics and morality for a fistful of worldly goods.To put this matter in clearer, if harsher, terms, Rabbi Uri Lupolianski is not the first haredi politician in Israel to be looking at a jail sentence. I suspect he won’t be the last.AVI BERKOWITZEfratNo endorsementSir, – Regarding “The story behind an ad condemning the treatment by Hamas and Iran of the LGBT community” (No Holds Barred, December 23), Rabbi Shmuley Boteach falls prey to the LGBT agenda, which is to seek the imprimatur of laws for sexual behavior that, according to Jewish tradition, will undermine our social fabric.Boteach writes that when a gay person seeks counsel, he advises that the person focus on keeping the other mitzvot. If gays and lesbians merely wanted to be tolerated for their sexual behavior, I would not have an issue. No one is suggesting that we go into people’s bedrooms. We all sin and we all do mitzvot; hopefully the latter outweigh the former.However, gays and lesbians want much more. They want the law to state that their sexual preference is equivalent to that of heterosexuals. This is something we cannot permit. It is one thing to tolerate the sinner; it is quite another to legitimate the sin.And so Israel welcomes the support of various groups. We must not simultaneously endorse those groups if what they promote undermines Jewish tradition.The American Mafia played a role in helping arm Jewish forces in 1948 but that does not mean we simultaneously endorsed organized crime.AVI GOLDSTEINNew YorkNever againSir, – A high-ranking court of the European Union recently declared that Hamas should no longer be listed as a terrorist state. The majority of UN-member nations also want Israel to be investigated for violations of the Geneva Conventions.What is going on? Has the EU gone out of its mind or is this the result of European nations such as France and England looking at looming Muslim majorities? Whatever the reason, it is time for the EU to wake up and remember the lessons of the Holocaust, which started with Germany and quickly spread through other nations on the continent.“Never again” must be the slogan for 2015.AL EISNERSilver Spring, MarylandThe writer is a Holocaust survivor.Military eunuchs Sir, – A video is doing the rounds on Facebook and elsewhere showing the stabbing of two members of the Border Police in the Old City of Jerusalem.I was horrified by their response. Why did they not shoot at the terrorist instead of engaging him in a dangerous fistfight? The answer appears very clear, unless evidence to the contrary is adduced: the utter idiocy of security personnel being shadowed by the over-arching specter of “human rights” has left them emasculated.Sadly, we have previously seen this despicably immoral trend, which places the human rights of the enemy above those of the IDF, plague and thwart military operations! Does Israel really think it gains any kudos from a sanctimoniously deranged world by “knocks on the roof,” warning leaflets and pre-action telephone calls? The responsibility of the government of Israel is to protect its soldiers, not its enemies! Israel’s progressives may revel in this dangerously debilitating ethos which has been forced down the gullet of the IDF. But it leaves our security forces, as clearly mirrored in the video, military eunuchs! While Israel pats itself on the back, terrorists have learned how to better stab Israelis in the back.In war, act as in war!LEVI J. ATTIASTel AvivCORRECTIONDue to an editing error, it was stated in the December 26 “From Our Archive” section that an item on the execution of Romanian president Nicolae Ceaucescu, as well as other news items, had appeared in The Jerusalem Post that day 50 years previously.These items actually appeared in the Post on December 26, 1989, 25 years previously.
