Your Oct. 22 editorial (“The old hatred is deforming the world”) is notable for its inflammatory rhetoric and faulty reasoning. No doubt Israel has lots of enemies who are happy to exploit any problems that Israel faces, but it wouldn’t hurt for us Canadian Jews to acknowledge once in a while that some of Israel’s problems are of its own making. Never once in the discussion of the Goldstone report have you even considered the possibility (if only to reject it) that Israel overreacted in Gaza. What makes you so sure that the Israel Defence Forces didn’t commit any crimes? Most military operations involve unnecessary violence against civilians. Your only “evidence” seems to be that an attack on Israel’s conduct must, by definition, be based on anti-Semitism. This sort of mindless argumentation is not conducive to improving the situation in the Middle East.
C. Peter Herman
Toronto

It is time for Jews to wake up. Israel and Jews have missed golden opportunities to counter the lies that are written about us. It is time for a world gathering of Jews to discuss how to fight the Arab propaganda that is the main cause of anti-Semitism, how to respond to the lies and false accusations that Hamas and Hezbollah feed to the United Nations and to the press, and how to beat them at their own game with the truth and to expose their lies. We should also establish a central organization to educate the international community with facts, and then people around the world will see who the real occupiers of stolen land are. Time is not on our side. The floodwaters of anti-Semitism keep rising, but there still is time to turn the tide. We owe it to our children and grandchildren to take action.
Rabbi David Spiro
Toronto

Sulphur grey, granite grey, asphalt grey, cement grey, ash grey; many, many monuments; all in varying shades of grey and black. Monuments cropping up like grey weeds in a grey cemetery; black stones growing like reeds in a grey walkway – the sad, neutral colours throughout the world where memorial stones, monuments and Holocaust museums abound.
We come to pay homage, we come to pay our respects, we come to place markers so that we remember we were there; our pilgrimage to these cold, menacing, awesome grey stones is our legacy. We pray, we beseech God that this piece of history should never be repeated. We remember; we must never forget.
Too many future generations were annihilated before they even had a chance to be born. They are resurrected by our giving birth to stones and monuments and memorials. So many Yad Vashems, so many buildings housing memorabilia, horror photos, frightening captions and impossible numbers, unbelievable numbers. So many numbers of people erased from the earth. We carry grey sacks of grey ashes on our backs, in our psyches. And when we’re weary, we pass these sacks on to future generations. We must. We must. Build up new generations of scholars, scientists, doctors, musicians, writers, artists, composers, leaders, teachers – for the benefit of all peoples.
Our legacy is grey and black. Our future, however, must be bright, Must be colourful, must be productive. That, too, is our legacy.
Eleanor Kunigis Moidel
Toronto

In his “Rejoinder to Crook and Marcus,” (letters, Oct. 29), Stephen Scheinberg complains that Israeli maps do not show “Palestine.” There’s a very simple reason for that. “Palestine” does not exist. Its borders have been the subject of negotiation since 1993, and the delay in its creation can be attributed almost entirely to Palestinian terrorism and refusal to accept Israel as the Jewish state. Scheinberg goes on to note that many Israel maps do not even show the Green Line, which he erroneously calls “Israel’s pre-1967 borders.” The Green Line is nothing more than the armistice line where hostilities ended in 1948. The fact that the Arab world has consistently refused to negotiate actual borders with Israel appears to have escaped his notice completely. As Scheinberg seems so keen to compare Israeli and Palestinian sentiments, may I remind him that as Itamar Marcus and Barbara Cook keep demonstrating, the Palestinians celebrate suicide bombers, naming schools and summer camps after them and idolizing them in their mosques. They also call for continued “martyrdom” in their textbooks and official media. That is official Palestinian policy. I challenge Scheinberg to find anything similar in Israel.
Stephen Tannenbaum
Thornhill, Ont.