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Forgiving Carter?
What JTA and Abraham Foxman, the
Anti-Defamation League's national
director, failed to note in President
Jimmy Carter asking for forgiveness
("Carter Asks Forgiveness:' Dec. 24,
page 10) is the fact that his grand-
son, Jason Carter, several weeks ear-
lier, announced he was running for a
Georgia State Senate seat.
Coincidentally, this is a district with
a vocal Jewish population. Jason Carter
issued a statement that his grandfa-
ther's letter was "unrelated to his cam-
paign and hailed the apology as Ca great
step towards reconciliation'."
Now, is this the same Jimmy Carter
who published Palestine: Peace Not
Apartheid with only fleeting references
to the Holocaust? Is this the same Jimmy
Carter who feels that calling Israel a
Jewish state is an "obstacle to peace"?
Is this the same Jimmy Carter who
accepted money for the bailout of his
family peanut business in the late
1970s by BCCI? (This was a bank which
Harvard University Professor Alan
Dershowitz has described as " ... a now-
defunct virulently anti-Israel bank.")
Is this the same Jimmy Carter, who,
quoted during a March 1980 meeting
with his senior political advisers, remind-
ed them of his tanking popularity in the
Jewish community and stated, "If I get
back in, I'm going to [expletive] the Jews."
And now that his grandson needs the
Jewish vote, are we really to believe in
the sincerity of Jimmy Carter's Al Het
[plea for forgiveness]?
Dr. and Mrs. Mrs. Edward Goldberg
West Bloomfield
Spoiled Child?
Why are so many so naive to believe
that Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian
Authority's Fatah party are friends of
Israel? Saudi 's Foreign Minister Prince
Saud Al-Faisal called Israel a "spoiled
child" in receiving preferential treatment
even though it "commits war crimes and
violates international law" (Answering
Israel's Critics, Jan. 21, page 22).
And then, P.A. President Mahmoud
Abbas confessed no disagreement
between Fatah and Hamas over their
beliefs or policies or uses of violence
(Editor's Letter, "Waking Up to Jihad,"
Jan. 21, page 5).
Are Jews just so used to poisonous
talk about Israel that we have become
indifferent?
You have to wonder why such a
"spoiled child" dispatched IsraAID
(the Israel Forum for International
Humanitarian Aid) to rescue and treat
Haitians or why the Israel Defense Forces
sent engineers to help reconstruct Haiti
("Haiti Relief,' Jan. 21, page 20).
I wondered, instead, how much of
Saudi Arabia's vast wealth was given to
help Haiti. According to a U.N. docu-
ment,"the country has neither donated
nor pledged so much as a penny or a
Band-Aid" (FoxNews.com , Joshua Rhett
Miller, Jan. 20).
Ask yourself, who really is the spoiled
child?
Arnie Goldman
Farmington Hills
A Poor Equation
Menachem Rosensaft's special com-
mentary "Muslims Who fight Anti-
Semitism" is filled with fine sentiments
(Jan. 14, page 22). However, his equat-
ing of Judaeophobia (a term he prefers
to anti-Semitism) with Islamophobia
addresses terms on different planes.
Although fear of Jews (or more
likely Jew hatred) is an ancient,
persistent and, for some, a plausible
phenomenon, most sensible people,
upon boarding a plane or going into
their mosques and churches, do not
worry that a wild-eyed Jew crying
"Torah! Torah! Torah!" will blow him-
self and everyone else to smithereens.
On the other hand, when you have:
a Muslim on a plane screaming out of
control that he wants to kill Jews; the
president of the Islamic Republic call-
ing for the elimination of the entire
Jewish nation; the head of Hezbollah
(party of Allah) hoping that all the Jews
will gather in Israel in order to make
wiping them out easier; Hamas, an
offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood,
insisting in its charter on the destruc-
tion of the Jews; a Jihadist group in
far-away India searching out the resi-
dents of a Jewish Chabad for torture
and murder; the president of Turkey
(a man who stated unequivocally,
"There is no moderate Islam; there is
only Islam") giving credence to (yes)
anti-Semitic blood libels; people being
exploded, decapitated and otherwise
maimed and mutilated, all in the name
of Islam — fear, especially if you are a
Jew, is not only a rational response, it is
imperative.
I'm as happy as anyone to hear
Muslims affirm the Holocaust and
denounce violence. And I applaud those
few, too few, brave souls who do so.
But fine sentiment has a way of dis-
solving into sentimentality, or false
emotion — a nice warm spa that keeps
from us the icy blast of truth.
Mitzi Alvin
Franklin