Letters to the editor January 20
Liberal culpability
Joel Rubin’s op-ed piece relating the Tucson shooting to the assassination of Rabin (“Learning from Israel, post-Tucson,” Jan. 13) is an affront to reason. To paraphrase the late Democrat U.S. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, Mr. Rubin is “entitled to his own opinion, but he is not entitled to his own facts.”
Joel Rubin asserts the policies of President Obama are “reasonable and moderate.” I consider President Obama completely outside the mainstream of American thought and so do apparently at least 40 percent of Americans who agree with the Tea Party, which makes it the most popular political movement in the United States, far more so than both the Republican and Democratic parties.
So what is so outrageous about Mr. Rubin’s column about Tucson? His assertion that it was the political climate that led to the attempt on the life of Gabby Giffords. Liberals like Mr. Rubin attempt to exploit the tragedy of the killings in Tucson. For Mr. Rubin it’s not about the dead or wounded; it’s about Fox News, Sarah Palin and conservative talk radio. Rarely in American history has there been such a charge so reckless and unsupported by the evidence.
Mental illness is the issue; not political ideology.
From all accounts, the alleged murderer Jared Loughner was apolitical, did not watch television, and if anything, a friend growing up with him said he was a liberal himself. The issue is how we treat people with mental illness, because it was clear that Jared Loughner was unstable when he attended community college in Arizona.
Worse, liberals deny their own culpability in the political climate of the day. If Barack Obama were as great as Mr. Rubin thinks, the president would renounce his famous comment, concerning politics, “if they bring a knife, you bring a gun.”
Like everyone, Sarah Palin and George Bush have their faults. Nevertheless, they have been subjected to 10 years of unrelenting hate by the liberals and the media. Both Bush and Palin have received myriad death threats and numerous pictures have been printed of guns pointed at their heads.
Daniel Wiseman
Squirrel Hill
(The author is the vice chairman of the 5th City Council District for Republican Party of Allegheny County.)
What ’67 border?
Over the past two weeks, I have read two authoritative and very surprising articles, written by highly accredited legal experts in international law. The first was by Alan Baker, ex-legal advisor to the Israeli Foreign Ministry and Israeli Ambassador to Canada. The second was a 15 page précis of a long legal document written by Howard Grief, who was also a legal advisor to the Israeli government and has now written a book explaining Israel’s actual legal rights in international law.
The first surprise came from Baker, who said in regard to the demands that Israel return to the “1967 border.”
“There has never been a 1967 border and therefore any claim to return to it is bogus.” He explained that there was a temporary agreed-upon armistice line after the 1967 war, which both sides were required to respect, prior to a final peace settlement. But the Arab side refused to discuss peace or even recognize Israel. So the much talked-of 1967 border never came into being and remains a figment of Arab imagination.
My second surprise came from Grief in his précis of his book “The Legal Foundation and Borders of Israel under International Law.” He gives legal proof that all of Palestine on both banks of the Jordan River, is, in International Law, “the national homeland of the Jewish people” — also confirmed by Melanie Phillips in her latest speech. This can only mean that it is the Jewish people who are the actual Palestinians. Further, it also means that Jordan lies within the borders of the true Palestine. So, legally, we already have a “two-state solution.”
Would it not be best for the West to try and persuade Israel’s enemies to accept international law rather than kow-tow to its illegitimate claims as they are doing at the moment?
David Lee
Kingston upon Thames,
England
comments