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Earn College Credit Volunteer in Region's English Summer Camp Travel and Tour guild Lasting Relationships Register today at wwwZmakland.edu/ie For program fees questions contact Lori Davidson-Mertz 248-103- 1 49 3 or niertz@jfnid.org i Inginga=ell PARTNERSHIP • The Mx Stern 6 Academic College of Emek Yezreel February 4 • 2010 Oakland UNIVERSITY /3"57N 11191111.11 J1Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit e 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