Less Talk, More Action
Dear Editor:
Our Jewish leadership has failed to harness and organize the average Jewish person’s righteous anger, deep frustration and desire to be doing more to stop this storm coming at them. “Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon suggested a change of strategy in the battle against anti-Semitism, offering a more active stance, and a move to “offense.” “While anti-Semitism continues to rear its head in the United States and throughout the world, we must move from defense to offense. We will not be silenced when Jews are murdered in synagogues and will not be ignored when those who wear kippahs are being killed in the street.”
Jewish Community Centers, Bureau of Education, synagogues, every place where Jews meet, need to form pro-active groups to hold accountable all those who issue smears, lies and genocidal hate speech against Israel and Jews. The list today borders on insurmountable: anti Zionist campus groups, academics, mainstream media, politicians, congresswomen, church groups, Arabs and Imams who preach Jew hate, Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam, NGO’s, the far right.
Being proactive is simple but not easy. Subscribe to Committee For Accuracy in Middle East Reporting, Honest Reporting, Zionist Organization of America, Gatestone Institute, The Algemeiner, The Jewish Voice (NYC), Melanie Phillips, UK. If letters and calls fail to change an offender, then it is time to form picket lines outside their headquarters with big signs and bull horns. The NY Times’ obsession with demonizing Israel has to stop. Now.
Today, I read about successful Jews buying a baseball team, a vineyard, or raising millions for some charity. I ask myself why they are not instead pooling resources to form our very own Jewish Public Relations Agency, dedicated exclusively to telling the truth about Israel and the Middle East?
Unless and until each and every one of us begin naming, condemning and educating those who speak Jew hate, the present massacres of Jews in our homeland, in Europe will be multiplied by “too much to bear.”
Sincerely
Sue Worth
Good News from DC Regarding the MTA?
Dear Editor:
The January 15, 2020 Metropolitan Transportation Authority Public Hearing for their proposed federal fiscal year 2019 capital program of projects confirms there continues to be good news from Washington concerning real financial support. NYC and suburban commuters will see the benefits.
The MTA receives over $1.4 billion annually from the Federal Transit Administration. These dollars are used to fund various capital improvement projects for NYC Transit subway and bus, Long Island Rail Road, Metro North Rail Road, MTA Bus and Capital Construction Company. Most federal transportation grants require a 20 percent hard-cash local share. FTA accepted toll credits instead of hard cash for the local share. This saved the MTA over $1 billion in the previous $32 billion 2015-2019 five-year capital program. The MTA will save $1.6 billion under the $51 billion 2020-2024 five-year capital program when applying for $8 billion in future FTA funding.
Washington has made available over $1.4 billion in 2019 FTA formula funding for the MTA. This helps pay for a significant portion of its capital program. This includes $28 million in Buses and Bus Facilities; $793 million in Section 5337 State of Good Repair and $672 million in Section 5307 Urbanized Area federal funding. There are other opportunities for up to several hundred million more in discretionary competitive federal grants.
The MTA can also take advantage of FTA pre-award authority prior to grant approval. Use of Pre-award Authority affords the MTA an opportunity to start projects months earlier and incur costs for reimbursement at a later date after grant approval and obligation of funding. The MTA currently manages an active portfolio of federally funded capital improvement projects and programs in open grants worth over $12 billion in direct FTA financial assistance.
Sincerely,
Larry Penner
(Larry Penner is a transportation historian, advocate and writer who previously worked 31 years for the Federal Transit Administration Region 2 NY Office. This included the development, review, approval and oversight for grants supporting billions in capital projects and programs on behalf of the MTA, NYC Transit, MTA Bus, Long Island Rail Road, Metro North Rail Road, NYC Department of Transportation and Nassau Inter County Express Bus along with 30 other NY & NJ transit agencies)
The New Hypocrisy
Dear Editor:
When did hypocrisy become the new norm? The NY Times’ relentless, biased, sloppily inaccurate, demonizing the Jewish state of Israel, and Jews who support Israel, directly contributes to the danger of being Jewish on campuses, in NYC, the USA and Europe. The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting documents detailed rebuttal for each of their skewed “reports” which this “newspaper” ignores and continues to ignore. Camera.org, in frustration, then put up huge billboards in NYC, opposite their offices, saying “Your Bias is Showing”, still to no avail. Yet they now are getting a pass, and some are applauding them, because they issued one editorial condemning this latest massacre of Jews, and only in the context of the recent march in NYC. Black Lives Matter, similarly condemned the targeting of Jews, yet its platform singles out only the Jewish state for castigation, calling Israel an apartheid and racist state.
We should reject these hypocritical bigots for their immoral words and actions, instead of tripping over ourselves to thank them for this one tainted crumb they throw us, amidst their sea of stirring up hatred of Israel and those who support this tiny Jewish state. They ignore and whitewash the true atrocities going on daily in our world. The Times repeatedly called molotov throwing Arabs in Gaza, alongside Hamas, threatening to storm Israel and kill every Jew in sight, ‘peaceful protestors’.
This is the same kind of thinking, this silence, this passivity, this acceptance of the new hypocritical doublespeak that got us loaded up onto rail cars to the death camps. I’d rather go down fighting. Wouldn’t you?
Sincerely
Pearl Weiner
Where’s the Outrage?
Dear Editor:
Where is the outrage from mainstream media, today’s“feminists”, LGBT, “progressive” groups, academics, when the actual atrocities and injustices going on in our world are ignored, yet they somehow seem to find their voices when it comes to smearing the tiny Jewish state of Israel.
Pelosi appoints an open Israel hater, Rep. Omar to the House Foreign Relations Committee. Omar loudly supports the boycott of only the Jewish state, never misses an opportunity to call Israel “apartheid”, and is now calling for sanctions against this tiny democracy who affords full civil, legal and religious rights to all of its citizens.
Where is the “feminist” outrage? Iran’s only female Olympic medalist “has rejected the regime’s oppression of women”, who force female athletes to cover their heads, and brutually enforce Islam’s supression of women and girls. UNICEF reported Islam’s Boko Haram has used 83 children as suicide bombers, “human bombs,” the majority of whom were girls. But today’s “feminists” are silent.
Where is the collective outrage, the reporting by mainstream media? Palestinian Media Watch documents child abuse by Arabs, “How old should children be before they are taught that the Dark–Eyed Virgins await them in Paradise if they become Martyrs for Allah? According to the Palestinian Authority no age is too young, as this message was broadcast on occasion of World Children’s Day on an official PA TV children’s program that addresses children as young as pre-schoolers.”
Where are the perpetual victims, the “progressive” voices raised in anguish against this fully documented, on-going Nazi speech? “Palestinian Media Watch has documented that Facebook has chosen to keep Fatah’s Facebook page open despite the recurring terror and Jew hate:
How Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah sees the Jewish role in the world:
- “The [Jewish] tribe led the project to enslave humanity”
- “[The Jews] were hated because of their racism and their filthy behavior”
- The Jews allied with Nazis to burn Jews “to accumulate wealth”
- The Jews say: “Only we are people, and all the others are our animals”
- “Non-Jews… according to their worldview are snakes”
- The Jews established “ghettos in order to separate from other people out of arrogance and disgust for non-Jews”
What will it take for our collective outrage to begin? More Jewish blood spilled? Haven’t we all had enough? I have.
Sincerely
G. Kaplan
