Call Students for Justice in Palestine What They Are
It is a misnomer — and misleading — to refer to Students for Justice in Palestine and other organizations involved in organizing and promoting Israeli Apartheid Week as a “Palestinian Support Group” (“Palestinian Support Group at Penn Raises Ruckus,” April 19).
SJP and its ilk do nothing to help the Palestinian-Arabs. They do not call for there to be elections in the Palestinian Authority-controlled areas and Gaza. They do not demand that Palestinian-Arab leaders stop stealing foreign aid to build more villas for themselves and to pad their Swiss bank accounts. They do not rally for Palestinian-Arab officials to build hospitals and schools rather than terror tunnels and stocked arsenals. They do not insist that Hamas stop dumping raw sewage into the Mediterranean to pollute the sea, or that the Palestinian Authority pay the electric bill so that there is power for more than a few hours a day in Gaza.
Instead, every activity SJP and similar groups have targets Israel. They blame Israel for all that ails Palestinian Arabs. They lie about what Israel does. They deceive well-meaning people about the true nature of the Palestinian Authority, Hamas and Arab governments.
For the sake of accuracy, please call them what they plainly are: anti-Israel organizations and entities.
Lee Bender and Kevin Ross | Co-Presidents
Steve Feldman | Executive Director, Zionist Organization of America-Philadelphia Chapter
Why So Shocked About Holocaust Ignorance?
Why is the Exponent editorial board surprised that most Americans, Jews excepted, know little about the Holocaust, nothing about it or believe it never occurred (“Defining Auschwitz Shouldn’t Be Difficult,” April 19)? Of our 50 states, only five — California, Illinois, New Jersey, Florida and New York — have laws mandating the teaching of the Holocaust, while Pennsylvania’s Act 70 strongly suggests it be taught without requiring it. New York was the last to mandate teaching, and that was in 1994.
Obviously the Holocaust is not high up on any state’s teachable list.
We Jews hold memorials, build museums and constantly rail about an event that is now approximately 75 years in the rearview mirror, but it is preaching to the choir. Maybe if a concerted effort is made to teach Holocaust history in public elementary and high schools as part of world history, future non-Jewish generations will understand this horrific event, because while 6 million Jews perished, so did an additional 7 million others. It would be incredible if Jewish efforts educated the “others.”
Ralph D. Bloch | Rydal
