Hate crimes article misleads
When I visited Washington recently, I was very annoyed by an article that I read in your newspaper, “House bill protects religious institutions” (Dec. 14). The article highlighted in enlarged colored print a paragraph from the center of the article: “In 2017, more than 160 bomb threats and other threats of violence have been made against Jewish community centers across the United states. Most of them came from a young Israeli man.”
Together with the emphasis on that section, your article makes no mention of the real statistics surrounding this type of violence, suggesting that most of it was due to the work of a deranged Israeli. From 2012 to 2016, the FBI Hate Crime Statistics show the percentage of anti-Jewish hate crimes ranging from 59.7 percent to 54.2 percent. While the anti-Muslim hate crimes have increased from 12.8 percent to 24.8 percent, the anti-Muslim frequency is still much lower than the anti-Jewish.
The article’s emphasis on the Israeli’s involvement in anti-Jewish hate crimes of 2017, therefore, is quite misleading, suggesting to some readers, perhaps, that anti-Jewish hate crimes are not as significant as they truly are.
SUSAN SOMMOVILLA
Elkins Park, Pa.
PLO renounced land claims
President Donald Trump announces that the United States of America is going to move the embassy to the capital city of Jerusalem. Good for him (“Trump Jerusalem stance draws mixed response,” Dec. 14). In response, Ramallah and Gaza are doing their “rage.” These Arabs are living in and rioting in lands that they themselves renounced all claims to.
The first charter of the Palestine Liberation Organization of 1964 (composed by the Arab League and not by nationalistic “Palestinians”) said that the PLO renounces all claims to the West Bank and Gaza. And yet they riot in Ramallah and Gaza.
TransJordan gave Judea and Samaria the name “West Bank” when it “occupied” the land. We have an East Jerusalem and not a united Jerusalem because in 1948, TransJordan occupied (in an aggressive war) Jerusalem, which was set to be an international city by the United Nations. There were just two countries that accepted the annexation by TransJordan — which had to change its name to “Kingdom of Jordan” because after its “occupation” of the western part of the Jordan River, it could no longer, based on facts on the ground, be called TransJordan.
The Arab states claimed in 1948 they had to wage war against Israel for the so-called Palestinians, whom they said had no government in place. They never gave the so-called Palestinians a state. Many of the so-called Palestinians became Jordanians.
If these “Palestinians” have to have a state of their own, even though they claim in their charters they are just a part of the Arab nation, why should they take the land they renounced in 1964? Why should America support their new claims to land they renounced in the past?
MIRIAM BURSTEIN
Silver Spring
