Letters: Verification, McCarthy, More

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Exponent Should Verify Letters
I’m catching up on the last few issues of the Exponent and just read a letter from Stephen A. Shalet (“Co-author’s Anti-Semitism Should Have Been Acknowledged,” April 1). The writer complains that a book review written by Exponent Staff Writer Jesse Bernstein and published in your March 18 issue neglected to mention that one of the authors of the book under review was a virulent anti-Semite.

This is a matter in dispute that has been denied by the author himself, and I don’t cite his name here because I do not want to perpetuate an allegation that I am not able to verify.
I understand that you disassociate yourselves from the comments expressed in the letters to the editor that you publish. Mostly, that’s fine. But when a letter specifically charges an individual with being an enemy of the Jews and also accuses a staff writer from your paper with neglect, then, at the very least, I hope you would solicit a response from your staff writer to publish alongside the letter.

And, ideally, since the reputation of the co-author of the book is also being seriously attacked, he, too, should be given the opportunity to respond. Publishing an ad hominem attack on anyone without giving them the opportunity to respond is not best practice.


Neil Litt | Princeton, New Jersey

Give Murrow His Due
In your article about Sen. Joe McCarthy (“Series Examines Legacy of Sen. Joe McCarthy,” April 8), Staff Writer Sophie Panzer omitted a reference to the extremely important broadcast on May 17, 1954 (three weeks before the appearance of Joseph Welsh at the Army-McCarthy hearings) of Edward R. Murrow on his CBS program “See It Now.”

It was courageous and risky at the time, but Murrow devoted much of his program to the abuses McCarthy was committing. Probably more people watched that program than Welsh’s appearance, which was during the day. Murrow’s denunciation was the very beginning of McCarthy’s ultimate downfall. Murrow at the time was probably all of broadcasting’s most prestigious and respected journalist.

Ron Kaiserman | Wynnewood

PA Must Step Up If They Want Vaccine
My response to the author of “Israel Should Help All Palestinians Get Vaccinated — Obligated or Not,” (April 18), Matan Arad-Neeman, a past president of J Street’s national board, is this: When the Palestinian Authority recognizes that Israel is on the map to stay, stops rewarding Arab terrorists by paying families of these terrorists, stops teaching their school children that it is their destiny to destroy Israel and murder Jews and stops glorifying these terrorists by naming sports facilities and streets after them, then Israel should do all it can to work in partnership with the Palestinian Authority to vaccinate every Palestinian.

Furthermore, Arad-Neeman has it backward. Israel is not occupying so-called Palestinian land. The so-called Palestinians are living in Jewish land. So says our Holy Torah. l

Zachary Margolies | Philadelphia

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