LETTERS: April 17-23, 2009

Shades of Hatred

Marty Kaplan once again goes where others fear to tread (“The Virtue of Hate,” April 10). His article makes us realize that hate is not a monolithic concept whose fire singes all those who come too close to its flame.

Hate, like its first and second cousins rage and anger, has evolutionarily evolved to help victims express the unfathomable emotional pain that ensues when one’s trust and faith in an orderly and fair universe is expunged without any prior warnings and without the application of any soothing balm.

Thus hate, like every emotion, shares two sides of the same coin — the seraphic of virtue tied to the satanic of evil. The battle between these apocalyptic forces has been, and probably always will be, a constant feature of our human existence.

Forgiving satanic evil enables the benign to be eclipsed by the malevolent, so the existence of hate as a virtue is a firewall against our spiritual incineration.

Marc Rogers
Sherman Oaks

Marty Kaplan is correct that forgiveness is not appropriate to the perpetrators of the death of Adrianna Bachan, but continuing hatred is not the only response. Even if the perpetrator attempts to do teshuvah, we are not required to accept their attempts. However, we cannot live in this emotional state. I wrote a prayer for those who are expected to mourn the perpetrator of physical or emotional abuse to suggest an alternative:

“As we prepare for the memorial service, we must acknowledge that for some of us this is a particularly difficult time. Many of us mourn for loved ones whose memories are a blessing; others of us have troublesome memories, unfinished business with those who died. Those of us who have not reconciled ourselves with family members cannot extol their lives, exalt their memories. But we cannot live forever with bitterness, anger or rage in our lives.

While Judaism does not require that we forgive those who have perpetrated evil against us, in order to move toward shlemut, wholeness and personal integrity, in our lives, we can use this time of memory for our own personal healing and growth. Kaddish is not a prayer that praises the dead, it is a prayer that praises God, and the power of God in the world. As we recite Kaddish together with Jews all over the world, we remember that death is an inevitable part of life, we mourn those who died before their time, those who died in suffering and pain, those whose lives enriched the world, and we remember the living, asking healing for all who suffer so that they can move on.”

Marcia Cohn Spiegel
via e-mail

Defining Net Worth

In “The Fifth Question,” Robert Wexler asks, “How do we define our net worth?” (April 3). I prefer the term “net financial worth.” This term helps one distinguish between how much money or property one has and what his worth is in terms of character, behavior and accomplishments.

David Wincelberg
Beverly Hills

Liberal Media Bias

[Rob Eshman refers to] “people who advocate on behalf of Israel” (“Two Words,” April 10). I think that Israel does not need these liberal “advocates.” Liberals and especially liberal media created a guilt image for Israel: “Sorry that we took West Bank after Arabs countries attack us many times; sorry, but we have to respond on rocket attacks on our cities; sorry, sorry, sorry.” You are wrong how “Lieberman wants to change Israel’s image,” he just wants to stop make excuses and erase that “guilt image.” In reality, liberal media should be blamed for damaging Israel’s image. Best illustration was recent “investigation” and publication in Haaretz, based on false rumors about “crimes committed in Gaza.” Liberal media provided long campaign to demonize A. Lieberman. Liberals just can’t stand people with a different opinion.

Boris Blansky
West Hollywood

Peace Takes Patience

David Suissa is to be commended for seeking new approaches to Israeli-Palestinian peace, but he ends up more frustrated than before (“Mind-State Solution,” March 27). It is not good enough.

He asks whether dismantling all Israeli settlements would stop Palestinian violence and hostility. Of course, stopping the violence has to be the most immediate objective, but he is asking the wrong question.

Peacemaking between polarized, mutually damaged antagonists does not come with the grand gesture; it necessitates patient efforts to construct a framework in which the parties have mutual incentive to comply with what they promise to do. What is required, in short, is a process that both sides understand will lead to something. The “peace process” in this case is unfortunately widely discredited, because of the events of the 1990s, but there is no substitute for it if peace is the goal.

What is most lacking in governmental and popular appreciation of the requirements for peace, I believe, is not trust but patience. Trust can be built, but not without patient efforts.

Suissa writes: “The Palestinians are selling a peace they can’t deliver, while the Israelis are buying a peace that doesn’t exist.” The thing to remember is without peace, the parties will be condemned to fight war after war. If the Palestinians can’t deliver peace now, Israel should help them do so. If peace doesn’t exist now, Palestinians should help find it. If peace is to be obtained, the two parties need to be more dependent on each other for good as well as bad results.

This suggests a second problem in working toward peace: both parties now find it galling and awful as enemies even to acknowledge depending on each other for their security. My view is that if we are serious about working toward peace — and we must be — it is better to concede such mutual dependence than to pay the price of more casualties later on if we don’t. As Yitzchak Rabin urged upon us earlier, we should swallow our pride to avoid sacrificing life.

Barry H. Steiner
Professor of Political Science
California State University, Long Beach

Newsroom Corruption

Your article about the meeting between a senior editor of the Los Angeles Times and a group of Jewish representatives was very instructive about the L.A. Times (“That’s Where The Debate Is Going,” April 3).

The editor of the L.A. Times admitted, as your article stated, “that whether Israel should continue to exist as a Jewish state or whether Hamas’ grievances are valid and justified … ‘that’s where the debate is going.’” Hence, the L.A. Times was totally aware of this fact when they made a deliberate decision to publish this malicious piece by a terrorist representing Hamas, a terrorist organization that has repeatedly declared that its raison d’etre is to destroy the State of Israel. More specifically, the L.A. Times has willfully bought into this corruption of the debate as their senior editor described, and, as such, is a willful participant of this malignant corruption.

Somewhere around the mid-thirties there was a general attitude amongst the political liberals of those days that the news media was being corrupted by the personal biases of the newspaper owners, and that this should be corrected by removing that power from the owners and letting the editorial and news decisions be made by the responsible newspaper staff. As we now see, the latter is just as corruptible — in fact, worse.

Can you imagine what the world would be like today, if our news media at the time of WWII were as disloyal to democratic values as they are today?

Leon Perlsweig
Woodland Hills