Dead wrong
To The Editor: RE: Tannenbaum is dead wrong on Israel
Alan Tannenbaum tells us in effect that Israel is the victimized, not the victimizer nor the Occupier since the Balfour Declaration, which legitimized a racist political perspective of Zionism by Chaim Weitzman and David Ben Gurion, who raised the slogan of “A Land Without People (Palestinians and Arabs), for a People Without Land (the Jews).” How did Tel Aviv work to make Israel a wholly owned Jewish state? With a military force that expelled over 1 million non-Jews and material assistance from the U.S., England and France. Issuing no right of return, having a huge amount of cash and military support helped to make Israel the only nuclear arms power in the Middle East, just as the U.S. supported the apartheid state of South Africa
So Gaza and West Bank are the Bantustans like Soweto. We cannot justify the huge crimes Israel committed, even toward second-class Israeli citizens and members of the Knesset, because of the Nazi Holocaust (there were others like the slave holocaust).
Daily war crimes are committed against the “other” through stopping ambulances, controlling water resources and destruction of homes for more settlements, equating the violence of Hamas rockets with the state terrorism of Israel. This was done from Golda Meier to Netanyahu
Hitler called Jews “untermenschen,” an inferior species, while Ariel Sharon calls Palestinian “cockroaches.” Over the decades Israel has jailed Mordecai Vanunnu for telling the world what was widely known; that Israel had nuclear weapons and awaits U.S. approval to bomb Iran. Your readers should be aware of the fact that both Israel and the U.S. supported Hamas as they thought that Arafat was the main danger. The Israeli-Palestinian “conflict” is the root cause of much of the terrorism we witness today.
Perhaps your readers should be aware of the fact that I was wounded in the Battle of the Bulge and my Infantry Division helped to liberate Buchenwald. I would be proud but not prouder than any other ethnicity I might have been born into.
Dave Silver
Big shoes
To The Editor:
Congratulations to John Bayles on becoming Associate Editor as stated in his “An open letter to the readers of the Downtown Express” message in last week’s issue. You have big shoes to fill in following Josh Rogers, who afforded many readers, including myself, the privilege of periodically appearing in the “Letters” section. Your promotion comes on the heels of recent news by the Wall Street Journal, with just a daily Greater New York section, will now include a “City News” section. How fortunate we are, living in one of the few remaining free societies with a wealth of information available for any citizen to gain access. Newspapers and magazines have to deal with the rising costs for newsprint, delivery and distribution along with reduced advertising revenues and declining readership due to competition from the Internet, cable news and other information sources. Daily papers tend to concentrate on international, Washington, Albany, business and sports stories. There are fewer reporters to cover news from the five boroughs and diverse local neighborhoods such as downtown Manhattan. As a result, local news within daily newspapers continues to be scarce. One daily newspaper, the Daily News, provides special individual supplemental sections for Queens, Brooklyn and Bronx readers every Tuesday. Why they don’t do the same for Manhattan makes no sense. They actually commit the time and staff to publish their own weekly newspaper within a newspaper with many stories and issues that may be covered in one of the existing weekly newspapers. The New York Times eliminated its Sunday “City Section,” which attempted to cover stories around the city, boroughs and other neighborhoods. It was replaced by the Sunday “Regional Section,” which attempts to cover New York City, Long Island and other Metropolitan communities. For local residents and thousands of us, including myself, who work, shop and dine in downtown Manhattan, your paper and its competitors, such as the Tribeca Trib, provide more in-depth coverage of local news not found in the remaining major daily newspapers. As a loyal reader for over twenty years, I look forward every Friday to reading another edition. In the marketplace of ideas, let us hope there continues to be room for everyone including our own Downtown Express. Larry Penner
