By LETTERS TO THE EDITORLetters(photo credit: REUTERS)The Netanyahu investigations Regarding “Gabbay: Netanyahu era is over” (February 22), we are now up to Case 4000 (and counting?). The suggestion in Case 4000 is that perhaps Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was attempting to get favorable media coverage that would offset the generally hostile coverage. (I don’t think the media have forgiven themselves for being so wrong in their exit poll predictions for 2015 election.) Prime Minister Netanyahu is unlikely to be taken out any time soon by the legal process currently underway, which by all accounts will take 12 months or longer to get started.Rather, this will occur by the defection of his coalition partners, both outside and inside the Likud, and I am certain that this is the strategy of the police.In most other democracies, those losing the election resign to lick their wounds, whereas in Israel, they merely go on to fight another round. Many of these lawmakers ran against Mr. Netanyahu in the last election or previously, so we are familiar with their policies.I am certain that Hezbollah, Hamas, Iran and other bad players are carefully monitoring the situation in the hope that if Israel goes to early elections, they can take advantage and instigate open warfare. Of course, in their regimes, they are not bothered by pesky bad press, and we know how they deal with errant journalists they might have.DAVID SMITH Ra’ananaThank you, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and thank you, Isi Leibler, for expressing so well what I think the majority of us have been feeling (“Dysfunctional politics and disgraceful behavior,” Candidly Speaking, February 21)! The witch-hunt against the Netanyahus has been beyond disgraceful, and unfortunately, The Jerusalem Post hasn’t given us a day’s break from its front-page, non-stop Bibi-bashing! It’s really awful! Judaism has a basic principal of hakarat hatov (appreciating the good). Prime Minister Netanyahu has done an amazing job at leading us through thick and thin, a job that nobody else can do capably. Is this is the appreciation we show him? Nobody is perfect, but Bibi has certainly proved to be the best man for the job at this point in history.LEAH S. WOLFMeitar
The slow fast train After reading “High-speed J’lem-Tel Aviv train slow in coming” (February 22), it’s time that spokespeople for Israel Railways stopped being economical with the truth.The reason for the delay has nothing to do with a lack of permits. It has all to do with a lack of construction and installation. You only have to look at what has been done to see all the missing components of the system: • There is only five or perhaps six kilometers of overhead wiring to power trains in one direction. A further 130 km. is required to make it operational between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Virtually all the support towers for the cables are missing. There is no overhead cabling in the area of the Tel Aviv stations either.• There is a complete lack of signaling for the line.• To my knowledge, there is only one electric locomotive available.In 2013, I wrote a letter to The Jerusalem Post stating that I did not see the line opening before 2020, something backed by the state comptroller in 2017. I hope I will be proved wrong.BOB GOLD JerusalemThe writer is a retired electrical engineer.The story about all the current preparatory faults of the fast train, which can easily be identified, has been brewing for many, many months, but Transportation Minister Israel Katz has kept it quiet.Everyone should know that Mr. Katz has no responsibility other than being a money bags and train dictator. The train cannot run unless the head of Israel Railways signs the document that permits it to run. Katz’s hands are clean if there is a disaster.I hope Israelis will let our Knesset members know that there will be blood on their hands if the train runs as Passover arrives, as Katz has promised. I am ready to protest loudly.DAVID GEFFENJerusalemThat Second Amendment Reader Fred Kosofsky (“Solving gun violence,” Letters, February 22) asserts: “It was, and is, an inalienable right of every person [in the US] to bear arms.” This statement is not only false, it is absurd.Without going into the details, not every person has the right to bear arms, even in America. Age, criminal record, medical condition and other things restrict who can and can’t bear arms. To say it is an “inalienable” right is to declare that, among other entities, the State of Israel infringes on its residents’ rights by denying them the opportunity to bear arms when not on active duty with the IDF or without receiving a license from the Interior Ministry.Mr. Kosofsky also ignores the opening 12 words of the Second Amendment to the US Constitution: “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state....”Since there have been no militias maintained in America for the purpose of supplementing the standing army since World War I (that task having been assigned by federal law to the National Guard units of individual states), this phrase indicates that what follows is no longer valid.HAIM SHALOM SNYDER Petah TikvaHolding the upper hand In the article “PM, Zarif spar at Munich conference” (February 19), Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu makes it crystal clear when he is quoted as saying that Israel “will act not just against Iran’s proxies that are attaching us, but against Iran itself.”As much as Iran would like to destroy Israel – the only country in the area that has the military might to prevent it from obtaining its goal of Middle East dominance – it does not want to give any nation a reason to destroy its nuclear facilities, which are its key for dominance at the end of a 10-year period when it will have met its obligations under the poorly structured agreement with the Obama administration.As long as Iran believes Israel will carry out a strike to reduce its nuclear facilities to ashes, we hold the upper hand.P. YONAHShohamAt the Munich Security Conference, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was blunt: “Iran is not Nazi Germany. There are many differences between the two. Well, for one, one advocated a master race, the other advocates a master faith.”Will the world listen? Of course not. As Winston Churchill put it in 1935, mankind is unteachable.“When the situation was manageable it was neglected, and now that it is thoroughly out of hand, we apply the remedies which then might have effected a cure. There is nothing new in the story. It is as old as the Sibylline books. It falls into that long dismal catalogue of the fruitlessness of experience and the confirmed unteachability of mankind. Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong – these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history.”MLADEN ANDRIJASEVIC Beersheba
