Letters this week explore the pre-nuclear dangers of a post-deal Iran, setting the record straight on Holocaust education and the deep roots of Jewish pirates.
The Pre-Nuclear Dangers of a Post-Deal Iran
To the Iran deal decision makers: Here is an aspect, and a warning, you fail to consider.
The Iranians are still chanting, “Death to Israel!” even as you decide to sign this deadly deal and gift them $150 billion.
One thing has escaped your notice: If you sign this deal, Israeli Jews will surely die way before Iran gets the bomb.
By signing this awful deal, you will, knowingly, give this terror regime the funds that they openly boast will go to rearm and train Hamas, Hezbollah and others to target Israeli Jews like me.
With this money, these Iranian-proxy murderers will kill us in greater numbers.
Yet, you agree to sign this deal knowing, by doing so, you are signing our death warrant.
By gifting them the funds, you know you are financing, aiding and abetting Iran’s murderous plans to kill Israelis — long before they get the bomb.
You cannot turn away when we are killed. You will bear the guilt, the blame and the shame.
When that happens, you will have our blood on your hands, and our death on your conscience.
Think again, before you sign away our lives to this fatal deal.
Barry Shaw | Co-Founder, Netanya Terror Victims Organization, Netanya, Israel
Setting the Record Straight on Holocaust Education
An article on Congressman Brendan Boyle (Cover Story, Aug. 20) contained the following: “Gov. Tom Corbett signed into law last year a bill making Pennsylvania the sixth state requiring the Holocaust and genocide be taught in schools.” Unfortunately, that is not true. The bill that was signed was a compromise bill that encouraged the teaching of the Holocaust on a voluntary basis but did not mandate it. It did have a provision to revisit the subject in 2017 and then perhaps mandate teaching the Holocaust if not enough schools had complied.
A bill making the teaching mandatory, as it is in New Jersey, could not pass our stalwart legislators in Harrisburg. The Jewish Federation signed off on the compromise with the thought it was better than nothing — which was a mistake, as the proliferation of Holocaust deniers attests. The number of young people who know little of World War II — and nothing of the Holocaust — is a tragedy.
Ralph D. Bloch | Rydal
The Deep Roots of Jewish Pirates
An article in the Exponent of Aug. 13, “Exhibit Uncovers Jewish Caribbean Treasure,” is especially interesting to our synagogue, Mikveh Israel.
They were Sephardic Jews (from the Hebrew word sepharad, meaning Spain or the Iberian Peninsula).
I am a docent in the synagogue and lecture on the history of the Sephardic Jews Jon Marks describes. Most of my material comes from a book, Jewish Pirates of the Carribean, by Edward Kritzler.
In sum: American Sephardic Jews trace their ancestry back to those long-ago Jews who fled Catholic Spain’s Inquisition, first for the Caribbean, then (a few) for a settlement called New Amsterdam, from there to Philadelphia, then Richmond, Charleston and Savannah.
Mary-Jane Bension | Docent, Congregation Mikveh Israel
