By LETTERS TO THE EDITORLetters(photo credit: REUTERS)Democrats have gone hard-leftI am shocked that Yesh Atid head Yair Lapid and Zionist Union MK Tzipi Livni are so politically naïve (“Lapid, Livni blame Netanyahu for decrease in support for Israel among US Democrats” (January 30). Don’t they know that the Democratic Party has turned hard-left and is inundated with Israel haters? It has adopted the so-called Palestinian agenda hook, line and sinker.To gain the support of Democrats, Israel would have to relinquish all of Judea and Samaria, and also Jerusalem, for starts. Is this what Lapid and Livni are advocating?As to the Conservative and Reform leadership’s decrease in support for Israel, let’s be honest: Their true religion is liberalism and they have a tragically left bent, as can be observed in their visceral hatred for President Donald Trump, regardless of his and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley’s expressions and policies supporting Israel.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is far from perfect, to say the least. However, his political radar is far superior than any alternative.MOSHE STERNBeit Shemesh An insult unworthy of an MKWith reference to “Interior Ministry: It’s moral to expel infiltrators” (January 30), during a discussion in the Interior Committee at the Knesset, MK Tamar Zandberg (Meretz) was removed after making a remark accusing Likud MKs of Nazism.As a Holocaust survivor and on behalf of those who survived and those who did not, I take that as a great insult. I expect better from a lawmaker.
JOE GELLERTNetanyaPoland and the HolocaustIt may well be true that, as Seth J. Frantzman writes, “when too many were welcoming the Germans quietly, the Poles were tearing down Nazi propaganda and storing weapons for the next round” (“Setting history straight – Poland resisted Nazis,” Comment, January 29). But he omits mention that, apart from Zagota, a fairly small Polish underground organization in German-occupied Poland from whose ranks came many of the Polish Righteous Among the Nations, not a single Polish partisan group or unit admitted Jews to its ranks.As long as the Germans were murdering the Jews of Poland, the antisemitic Poles had no desire to save Jews from deportation and certain deaths. Tacitly supporting the massacre of the Jews in this manner took precedence over the Polish fight against the occupying German army.Nor does Mr. Frantzman mention that during the heroic Jewish uprising against the Germans in the Warsaw Ghetto, Polish partisan groups in the immediate proximity offered no assistance to the valiant Jewish fighters. It took the Germans longer to end the Jewish uprising in April 1943 than it did to conquer Poland in September 1939, and was more costly. This is by the Germans’ own testimony (see Flags Over the Warsaw Ghetto by Moshe Arens).Omissions such as these are the difference between balanced and biased articles.BERYL RATZERNetanya It is heartbreaking to read how the Polish government is trying to whitewash Polish participation in the German plan to eliminate all Jews from Europe.As many have already written, Polish antisemitism was not invented by the Nazis. It was there, ready to be put at the service of the Final Solution. There were pogroms before World War II without Nazi encouragement!My parents were fortunate to escape with a baby – me – to Russia. When we came back to Krakow after the war, I was a child, but I witnessed my great-uncle having his beard sheared off, being harassed and physically attacked when going out on the street. We all sat around him. It seemed a real Tisha Be’av atmosphere! This was Krakow – after the war!Poles would say: “How come there are so many Jews left? We thought they had all been taken care of.” Many were afraid that the returning Jews would claim their belongings.My mother lost all her family – her parents and seven siblings, married with families, who had been in hiding but were denounced. Guess by whom?These are my personal fragments of history after the war.NINA DIESENDRUCKNetanya In light of Poland’s protestations against the use of the phrase “Polish death camps” and other expressions suggesting that the country was involved in the death of Jews, a phrase by Shakespeare springs to mind: “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”MARION LUPUHaifa Brilliant, magnificent essayWith regard to Nathan Lopes Cardozo’s “The rite of circumcision” (Comment & Features, January 25), my compliments for printing this important, brilliant and thorough essay that explains the real and full meaning of what it is to be a Jew. A real tour de force.The accompanying photo of protesters was totally superfluous. What business do gentiles have with brit mila anyway? And Germans yet! Imagine Jews protesting against some Christian or Muslim custom – what howls we would hear!What is more important is answering the quasi-legal argument of what right parents have to infringe on the rights of a child without it’s consent?This question has long-since been answered by a Belz leader in a masterful interpretation on the double blessing given the father during the Birkat Hamazon (Grace after Meal) at a brit. The first blessing is for bringing his son into the world; the second is for retroactively confirming his own brit.All the protests are really a continued denial of God, Who created the world, and of the Torah He gave us to direct our lives in it.BARUCH STERNTHALGivat Shmuel To Rabbi Cardozo: God bless you for your magnificent opinion piece!MIRIAM ADAHANJerusalem Small-time employersTen years ago, the Knesset passed a law meant to create pensions for employees that would be financed by employers. Unfortunately, householders employing a cleaner for a few hours once or twice a month were also included.The small amounts paid to the pension funds are more of a nuisance than a profitable business. So to make it pay, the funds pushed up the installments paid by small-time employers to 18.5% to include benefits paid by large employers, part of which is supposed to be deducted from the worker’s salary. They have now introduced a clause covering “inability to work due to health problems.” This creates difficulties when the prospective cleaner has a history of health problems and the pension fund can refuse to cover him or her. What does a “health risk” have to do with a pension fund?The tax authorities want employers to hire an accountant or go through an employment agency. This is unreasonable. The wages are too low to be taxable and agencies only pay minimum wages, retaining the difference as “operating costs.”On top of the costs created by this law, both the employer and the employee have to fight their way through a mountain of bureaucratic procedures to access what is due them. This poorly thought-out law seems to have been designed to promote employment agencies and open other means of exploitation by pension funds. It must be changed.SOLLY SINGERRa’ananaCORRECTIONS• Rabbi Gilad Kariv, not Efrat Mayor Oded Revivi, is the person on the left in the January 31 photo headlined “Planting for unity.”• The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was signed in 1939 on August 23, and not as stated in “Death Camps” (Editorial, January 30).• The headline “Ministry to pay civilian ‘inspectors’ $9,000 per deported immigrant” (January 30) was in error. There was no specific designation for the payment of the bonus.
