Letters to the Editor

05.04.16

Cover, April 27: “Spring Poetry Search”

From the Zo Man

Old Man Gloom sez:

Yes, Reporter. You

published the haiku I wrote.

That was a wise move.

The Official Buring of Zozobra
Via Facebook

Opinion, April 20: “Gutsy Move”

Why All the Big Guns?

I read the weighted responses to Lena Griffith's potent angry letter to the editor from major NM-based representatives for the well-organized "not for profit" corporatist heads of ADL, Federation, Chabad etc.

Why all the big guns pointed at an American woman who questions US's unending support for the Israeli state's "slo-mo" genocide in Palestine since 1948?

Americans have learned that an Indigenous population oppressed by military occupation and brutal treatment will resist with all they have to end said oppression. Wounded Knee and Vietnam come to mind for Americans. That the US government arms and pays Israel's government millions of tax dollars every single day to expand and "cleanse" the Indigenous Palestinian population is an outrage to our hearts and minds.

So-called "nonprofits" who wash their donors' contributions in order to continue funding the criminal 70-year occupation of another people on their own land is a violent slap in the face of thinking and informed Americans, who have observed the pathetic malaise of Congress and UN who allow outright torture and murder of Palestinian children and youth. A child [was] murdered every other day for the last 16 years by those occupiers, with nary a criminal charge against their border police, IDF or illegal settlers who beat, poison wells, attack American laity observers, run over and murder Palestinians routinely.

Psychopathic racism and supremacy reign in that once most "moral army." Remember the tens of thousands who gathered in Rabin Square a week ago chanting "Death to Arabs"? That is what people around the world and across North America reject, revile and despise. If you defend such racist, brutal abuse, you are not seeking peace but rather pieces.

Mariam Shumovski
Albuquerque

‘Thanks’ from Israel

I want to thank Lena Griffith for taking the mask off the endemic hatred of Jews and Israel masquerading as criticism of Israeli policy. She doesn't even pretend to base her distaste for Israel and Jews on what Israel did after being attacked by Jordan in 1967, but calls "Jewish Zionists and Jewish Israelis" the "new Nazis" because of the last seven decades, making it clear that for her the very existence of the Jewish state is the crime.

Then comes her grand finale, blaming increasing anti-Semitism on the Jews themselves. Thank you, Lena. All intelligent, well-meaning people who read your letter now know the truth behind the demonization of Israel.

Alan Stein
Netanya, Israel

Don’t Incite Violence

In her letter to the editor, Lena Griffith writes, "This time, Jews are doing it to themselves." Whatever her intention is, she needs to realize that this will be heard as a call for violence against our Jewish community. As we saw in a Paris supermarket, bus bombing in Bulgaria, and a JCC in Kansas, the possibility of attacks against Jews is very real. Let us not wait for an incident like that in Santa Fe, God forbid, before we start working to stop bloodshed and terror of any sort.

If we are to disagree, let us do it in an atmosphere where are all safe from violence. The Reporter needs to take responsibility for publishing incitement.

Daniel M Israel,
President Kol BeRamah
Torah Learning Center Santa Fe

Why Print It?

I can't understand why you would publish such a profoundly anti-Semitic letter. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but not to their own facts. To compare the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the genocide of 6,000,000 Jews and millions of other undesirables is simply untrue. If Israel systematically rounded up the Palestinians and gassed them, then this would be a fair analogy. But as the world knows, no such genocide has or will occur.

Further, the Jews that were murdered by the Nazis had done nothing to deserve their fate other than being Jewish. By comparison, Palestinians have sent thousands of rockets at population centers and hundreds of suicide bombers and terrorists to murder Israelis. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is complicated, and statements like this letter do nothing more than inflame hatred.

History has shown that if you tell a big lie often enough, people come to believe it. The Nazis convinced millions of Germans, Poles and other Europeans that Jews are rats and vermin. Many of these people were already profoundly anti-Semitic; nonetheless, this lie became reality and allowed hundreds of thousands of people to directly or indirectly participate in the genocide with a clean conscience. We can all agree that killing rats and vermin is a good thing.

I have visited Santa Fe and hate to think this represents your community.

Audrey Kadis
Brighton, Mass.

Where are Standards?

Has SFR abandoned all pretense of journalistic standards, or editorial oversight, of what appears in its pages?

Otherwise, what could explain printing Lena Griffith's blatantly biased, abysmally ill-informed, grossly anti-Semitic letter? Space hardly would suffice to point out all its factual errors. One, though, "medical denial," was ludicrously perverse. … When Palestinian officials, or family members, are desperately ill, they head to Israel for treatment. That includes close relatives of Palestinian Authority head, Mahmoud Abbas, and Hamas head, Ismail Haniyeh.

Many ordinary Gazans, West Bank Arabs, even Syrians have been treated in … one of Israel's many world-class hospitals. One recent example epitomizes Israel's giving medical ethos. A Syrian toddler, with life-threatening injuries, was evacuated to Israel. It was discovered that she had another life-threatening condition, requiring access to a close relative. An Israeli special forces team was able to enter Syria and bring one back to Israel.

Israel is among the first to send medical rescue teams, as now in Ecuador and Bhutan, as formerly in Haiti and Nepal, to countries, experiencing natural disasters, around the world. This is one of its greatest strengths, so, naturally it is one at which haters of Israel, like Griffith, aim their greatest lies.

Richard D Wilkins
Syracuse, NY

Evaluate the Myths

It is a shame that it takes a committee of five echoing rabbis, three federation fundraisers, two misinformed laymen and an ADL director who still cannot critically evaluate the myths they share that were created expressly for the appropriation of Palestine for the resettlement of Jewish Europeans after WWII. This theft of another people's land started with a great ethnic cleansing in 1947 (not during the 1948 War of Independence). This mythology has grown into a calumny.

It has grown and been amplified so loudly that a presidential candidate assures a Zionist donor, Haim Saban, of 200,000 murders during the next genocidal attack on Gaza. It grieves me that given the opportunity to do so, Israelis have learned to act just like Nazis. I learned all those same myths regurgitated in the letters in the April 4 Reporter in my first 65 years but managed to evaluate them when I finally faced the truth.

The truth is there; open your eyes. Israel is not what he had hoped and prayed it would be in 1948. Herzl is dead but the Nazi Jabotinski sadly lives in the hearts of those who wish to retain victimhood as their reason for being.

Gerald M Rosen
Santa Fe

Shame, Shame

I cannot fathom how you chose to print this letter by Lena Griffith. It is undisguised hate material. It recycles the old anti-Semitic line that Jews themselves are responsible for the hate visited upon them. Along with the newer, scurrilous canard that Jews and Nazis can somehow be equated. Not to mention minimizing of the Holocaust. Jews "suffered" under the Nazis? Hardly the word to use for genocide which reduced millions of people to smoke and ashes. ... I think an apology to your readers would be appropriate, plus editorial guidelines which would prevent such screed from being disseminated by your paper in the future.

Barry Salwen
Wilmington, NC

Can’t Silence Voices

Having an obvious, orchestrated response to my comment by the tribal Jewish Zionist organizations in New Mexico does not stop the truth of Israeli actions on innocent life from becoming globally transparent. In Santa Fe, a city still suffering from the colonialism of Native American and Hispanics, do Zionists really think they can silence voices for justice? Israel is openly practicing ethnic cleaning and genocide, worse than anything seen in apartheid South Africa, and just as horrific as the Nazis.

Since 1948, Israel has officially killed hundreds of thousands of people "defending" itself in wars and attacks on Arab neighbors. Israel has created the largest unresolved refugee crisis in recorded human history. What happened to the fundamental Jewish commandment "Thou Shall Not Kill'"? It is stolen land, and Palestinians have the right to go home. I stand with the tens of thousands (and growing) of Jewish voices for justice who have openly equated Israel with the Nazis and/or Nazi tactics (Media Benjamin, Miko Peled, Ilan Pappe, Hedy Epstein, Dr. Finklestein, Gilad Atzmon, JVP, etc.). They are my people. All land is holy, and all people are chosen. In time, the "Jewish state" will hurt all Jews. Boycott, divest and sanction (BDS) Israel! L'chaim.

Lena Griffith
Santa Fe

Like

Sibling like Ishmael

Lion-hearted like King Richard

Articulate like Arthur Schopenhauer

Bombastic like Richard Wagner

Efficient like Henry Ford

Swiss like Carl Jung

Emphatic like a fuehrer

Big and blue like IBM

Yellow like a badge

Green like the countryside

Gentile like the masses

Light like gas

Constant like time

Ivan Smason
Santa Monica, Calif.

News, April 27: “Pop Quiz, District 2 County Commissioner”

Not so Fine

I loved reading and listening to this. Not one of the candidate's finest hours, to be sure. Thank you for providing such great info to the electorate.

Susan Martin,
Political Chair
Rio Grande Chapter, Sierra Club

Correction

In April 27's Pop Quiz, we listed the wrong outgoing Santa Fe County Commissioner for District 5. Liz Stefanics is leaving the commission and running for a state Senate seat.

SFR will correct factual errors online and in print. Please let us know if we make a mistake, editor@sfreporter.com or 988-7530.

Mail letters to PO Box 2306, Santa Fe, NM 87504, deliver to 132 E Marcy St., or email them to editor@sfreporter.com. Letters (no more than 200 words) should refer to specific articles in the Reporter. Letters will be edited for space and clarity.

Letters to the Editor

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