Letter was vitriolic
Washington Jewish Week doesn’t have to publish any letter that a reader submits. (We’ll await the fate of this one.) It leaned heavily toward freedom of expression in publishing that of Arthur Mensch (“What’s a Democratic Jew to do,” Oct. 6). To place Mensch’s vitriolic and vicious anti-Hillary Clinton, pro-Donald Trump letter in the category of a screed would be an act of grade inflation.
When a writer resorts to the tired cliché “self-hating Jews” — short for insufficiently anti-Arab/Palestinian — as Mensch does to label Clinton’s Jewish staff and advisers, the reader should know what she’s in for. Mensch almost out-Trumps Trump in his use of opinions disguised as facts. For both men, their statements are self-evident. So it needs nothing to back up statements like Clinton being “the most corrupt candidate ever to be nominated.”
It is ironic that Mensch’s letter appears in the same issues as the memorial pieces about Shimon Peres. For Mensch, Jews who views are similar to those exhibited by Peres would probably fall into the self-hating category.
JESSE ETELSON
Rockville
Myth of the settlements
The writer brings up again the myth that settlements incite the opposition by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas
(“J Street has it right,” Letters, Sept. 29).
No action by the Israeli government would be acceptable to the Palestinians, except the suicide of the State of Israel with complete expelling of all Jews, a view of Mahmoud Abbas, the so-called moderate. Continuation of building new housing in cities and towns past the temporary 1967 armistice lines is the only strategy available to Israel in its search for peace. The longer that the Palestinians refuse to negotiate and acknowledge the Jewish state, the smaller will be any Palestinian nation — and economically poorer.
Protests either by the Palestinians or the international community are worthless in light of the refusal of the PLO and Hamas to recognize that Israel exists, and that peace can occur only by negotiation and not international pressure or terrorism.
NELSON MARANS
New York, N.Y.
