A question for Hamas

I have only one question to Hamas and their supporters.

If the loss of Palestinian lives – men, women, children and babies – is as critical as it appears in the media, why then did Hamas not use their tunnels to give shelter to these people? 

There were warnings before each raid. So many lives could have been saved.

I have not heard this question posed to Hamas on any TV coverage of the Gaza crisis.

Bess Lokach
Richmond Hill, Ont.

Deli owner offends

Reading Zane Caplansky’s article “Why I’m sponsoring the Toronto Palestine Film Festival,” (Aug. 7) was very upsetting and difficult for me. 

 In light of Operation Protective Edge being carried out by the Israel Defence Forces and the huge swirl of renewed anti-Semitism, Caplansky should be ashamed of himself for promoting this film festival. 

He goes out of his way trying to explain his Judaism and family heritage to justify why he is supporting this event. He even tries to explain the fact that his name Zane is an Arab name. 

There are raw feelings in our Jewish world today, and the last thing we need is to have a prominent Jewish deli owner in Toronto boast about his support of such an event.

Brenda Kaman
Richmond Hill, Ont.

Predicting the Shoah

In the article “Which way do Jews face, left or right?” (July 31) Michael Brown stated that the revisionist Zionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky was no better than his left-of-centre Zionist colleagues in having the foresight to predict world affairs. 

However, while it is true that he didn’t foresee the outbreak of  World War II, there is evidence to indicate that he did understand that the Jews of Europe were in great danger. 

His rescue plan for Europe’s Jews preceded the outbreak of the war, and in a speech to Polish Jews in Warsaw on Tisha b’Av 1938, he stated the following (translated by Gad Nahshon):

“It is already three years that I am calling on you, Polish Jewry who are the crown of world Jewry. I continue to warn you incessantly that a catastrophe is drawing closer.  I became gray and old in these days, my heart bleeds, that you dear brothers and sisters, do not see the volcano which will soon begin to spit its all consuming lava.” 

While he may not have understood how imminent the war was or the precise dimensions of the Holocaust, he did have a sense of the impending doom faced by European Jewry. 

Jacob Sivak, 
Distinguished Professor Emeritus 
University of Waterloo 
Waterloo, Ont.

Wartime humour tasteless

I was appalled to read “Sexy support for the Jewish State,” (July 31). 

Israel is at war, people are suffering and dying. To use war-centred humour to raise money for Israel and to make a profit using this dire situation is tasteless. To draw attention to this fundraising effort in your paper is unconscionable. 

Furthermore, the reference to the Facebook page Standing with IDF and its use of women’s bodies to support male soldiers is an embarrassment, whether it is women or men who do the posting.

To use women’s bodies as a means to encourage soldiers only perpetuates sexism and other forms of oppression, and actually has been used as a tactic in war in the past. 

Marilyn Bicher 
Montreal

Never give up land

On June 5, 1967, the Israeli military captured Khan Yunis, near the Gaza Strip, the  same area where the Israel Defence Forces are taking on Hamas fighters today.

You never give up potential trouble spots, even under outside pressure, because, sadly, Israel stands alone.

The rocket attacks on Israel are unabated, and I wonder: could a nuclear one be next?

Denis Bond, former member 
of Her Majesty’s Armed Forces 
Hamilton, Ont.