Nazi in the hot tub, free speech and radical Islam, Obama, Rove

Sabeel Conference

StandWithUs and American Jewish Congress (AJCongress) attended the All Saints Sabeel Conference (Letters, March 7). Rabbis [Steven] Jacobs and [Haim Dov] Beliak got basic facts wrong and grossly mischaracterized the event. The rabbis should not defend Sabeel and attack those who have raised red flags about Sabeel’s objectives and views.

Contrary to the rabbis’ claims, speakers did not advocate a two-state solution. The Rev. Ateek said he “didn’t care” if there were one or two states and elsewhere has repeatedly said one state is the “ideal.”

The conference’s Jewish anti-Zionist speakers, Gabriel Piterberg, Anna Baltzer and Marcy Winograd, all directly or indirectly advocated a one-state solution, which would mean an end to the Jewish state. When Winograd called for one secular state, she got a standing ovation.

These “moderates” twisted history beyond recognition, erased all context for Israel’s self-defense and exaggerated or lied about Israel’s current counterterrorism measures.

Speakers claimed that Palestinians are engaged in “nonviolence,” ignoring the wars and terrorism Israel faces and has faced for 60 years.

Their claim to nonviolence is deceptive. Despite their calm voices, their demonizing narrative is violent and an incitement for physical violence against Israelis.

The rabbis minimized the significance of Sabeel equating Palestinians and Jesus, but such deicide imagery has driven anti-Semitism and pogroms for centuries and gives further justification for Palestinian violence.

How could this event lead the rabbis to believe Sabeel promotes dialogue or to praise them while condemning those who seek fairness and balance? The Sabeel Conference imported the disfiguring propaganda of Arab anti-Israel radicalism into a Los Angeles church.

Mainline Christian support for these views will only inflame the Palestinian extremism at the heart of this ongoing conflict. The Rev. Bacon’s high praise of the Rev Ateek is a betrayal of Christian-Jewish friendship.

Roberta Seid
Education Director
Roz Rothstein
CEO
StandWithUs;
Gary Ratner
Western Regional Director
American Jewish Congress

Free Speech

Flemming Rose’s passionate appeal is fine as far as it goes, but let us Jews not be so smug about the ways our own fundamentalists disparage principles of free speech (“Free Speech and Radical Islam,” Feb. 29).

Last June, the gay pride movement tried to organize a march in Jerusalem that had to be canceled because of threats of violence from the Haredi community. In fact, the year before, a Haredi fanatic stabbed a gay demonstrator with a knife, who barely survived. It was a fanatical Haredi who assassinated Yitzhak Rabin, permanently depriving him of his free speech.

Women who exercise their free speech rights to dress as they wish, pray at the Western Wall or even to sit on buses on certain routes through Jerusalem are beaten, stoned or mauled. And when the Orthodox rabbinate in Israel legally dominates all family rites, such as marriage and funerals, the free speech of every other variety of Jew (secular, Reform, Conservative, etc.) is severely abridged.

So it is not just the fanatics but the very State of Israel that actively suppresses its citizens’ speech and rights.

The problem is not with certain religions or certain cultures but with fundamentalism and fanaticism and their enablers, wherever these excesses occur.

We Jews are not immune.

Eric A. Gordon
Director
The Workmen’s Circle/Arbeter Ring
Southern California District

‘Off-the-Handle’ E-mails

Though I am certain you will not publish this letter, as it is obviously not politically correct, I write to you nonetheless in the hope that those of you in decision-making positions will reevaluate the responsibility you carry as Los Angeles’ only Jewish newspaper.

How ironic that on your online discussion page you sanctimoniously disapprove of lashon hara (slander), yet when it comes to big news, it’s your duty to report it. A case in point is the article written about Rabbi Shlomo Schwartz (“Chai Center Rabbi Explains ‘Off-the-Handle’ E-mails,” Feb. 15). It is nothing less than character assassination.

Yet, alas, you are the only game in town for someone looking for local Jewish news. If editorially, as well as with news reporting, you would begin to present balanced news relevant and sensitive to all branches of Judaism, based upon the demographics of the L.A. Jewish population, many more would look forward to each issue, and you might really become what I sense you would like to be called: Los Angeles’ Jewish newspaper.

Yehuda Frischman
Los Angeles

Karl Rove

I thought your article was accurate on the experience of listening to Karl Rove (“Karl Rove Lecture Spins Crowd Animosity to Admiration,” Feb. 29).

I support the university in its wisdom to present speakers who are controversial.

The evening was fascinating, informative, and Rabbi [Robert] Wexler did a masterful job. I left thinking only how sad it is that a man like Karl Rove, with his brilliance and passion, does not choose to use his obvious abilities to make positive changes in the world.

Lynne Silbert
via E-mail

I fervently support American Jewish University and Gady Levy’s fine work, but hosting Karl Rove was a bad decision.

Rove is brilliant. He is also immoral, even for a politico. His tactics include spreading rumors that former Texas Gov. Ann Richards was a lesbian and that Sen. John McCain revealed intelligence to his North Vietnamese captors.

But I will remember him best as the master strategist of the wedge issue and the attack ad and withholding national Republican campaign dollars from local candidates who refused to follow him into the gutter.

Rove has consistently embodied a classic maxim of evil: The ends justify the means.

Thanks to Rove and former Rep. Tom Delay (R-Texas), our political culture is at its lowest point since Watergate. Principled Republicans who love their party and patriotic Americans who love their democracy would never give him a platform.