Beware of J Street
The Jewish community should be made more aware of J Street, the organization of Jews which proclaims itself to be “pro-peace, pro-Israel” while publicly advocating pro-Palestinian positions with such fervor they might as well be wearing kaffiyehs.
Very disturbingly, many rabbis are adherents of J Street. The J Street website exhorted these rabbis to use the High Holidays as the occasion to present the J Street playbook to their congregations. This was done to least one major area congregation, on Kol Nidre, the solemnest night of the year, to a captive audience in attendance under compulsion of conscience, destroying the possibility that most of his congregants could approach Kol Nidre with anything like the appropriate mindset.
From the bimah, this rabbi endorsed almost every single Palestinian demand. Stop building housing in Jerusalem itself, the very capital of Israel! Give them a chunk of Jerusalem, which has never in history been an Arab capital of anything. Go back to the 1967 borders, with “land swaps.” Israel is tiny. Just what land would he swap? And why? The Arabs launched two aggressive genocidal wars against Israel, with the announced goal of exterminating not only Israel but also its entire Jewish population. Just when in all human history has any entity that engaged in two genocidal wars of aggression and lost them both been given land back?
The settlements, of course, must go. Why? If indeed there is a future Palestinian state with Jewish settlements within its borders, shouldn’t those settlements be able to exist in peace, just as Israeli Arabs have their own settlements within Israel?
J Street adherents give aid and comfort to Israel’s enemies. When rabbis in particular endorse Arab demands, the Arabs gleefully proclaim, “See, see, look at all those rabbis that support our position. Obviously, we are in the right!” J Street supporters are soul mates of Neville Chamberlain — appeasers who seem to believe that giving the Arabs everything they ask just because they ask it, will bring peace to Israel. They have already forgotten World War II, where giving Hitler the Rhineland, Austria, the Sudetenland and Czechoslovakia did not bring peace. It brought Auschwitz.
Lee Levin
Overland Park, Kan.
Where are the Jews?
In the Sept. 29 issue of The Chronicle, I wrote an article published on the opinion page titled, “How to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.” I also sent the article to five friends in Israel.
All five of those friends had something to say about the article. Three of them, in addition to their comments, also wanted me to tell them about the reaction of the local Jews to the article. Subsequently, I wrote to them that there was no reaction at all.
Hearing this, one of my friends wrote, “Are there any Jews in Kansas City? If there are, are these Jews Jewish? I hope this will never happen to them. However, it is possible that, at some point in the future, some (all?) Kansas City Jews will be seeking a safe haven. When they arrive at our shores, we will receive them with open arms. So it goes.”
Zeev Dickmann, Ph.D.
Overland Park, Kan.
