Letter to The Washington Post

Re: "Israel says it won’t forcibly deport illegal African migrants, but it wants them to leave" (12/21/13) Dear Editor, Instead of a front page article about Syrian children receiving life saving medical care from their sworn enemy Israel, The Washington Post published yet another critical piece on how Israel responds to illegal African immigrants, actually extremely compassionate compared with its neighbors. Curiously, there has yet to be a Post story on why the African immigrants don't stop in Egypt, which is closer, and that is because they are robbed, raped, or murdered there. Further, in Egypt there is no freedom of Press, so Post reporters wouldn't be able to write such a piece and live to tell about it. Ironically, in Israel, the only nation in the region with freedom of the press, journalists exploit this freedom to find fault with the country. So Israel, which has taken in millions of Jewish refugees, many of whom with no place to go otherwise, is vilified for not taking in Muslim or Christian refugees. Israel, a country that makes up .1% of the Middle East shoulders the blame for what the 99.9% of the Middle East should be doing, courtesy of The Washington Post. Michael Berenhaus

Letter to The Washington Post

Dear Editor, In "Iran questions you were embarrassed to ask" (12/1/13), The Washington Post should be embarrassed with its answers. The Post whitewashes the existential threat posed by Iran on Israel by saying that "the dislike is mutual." There is nothing mutual here. I haven't heard Israel saying that Iran should be wiped off the map. The equivalence drawn is abhorrent! The Washington Post even defends Iran's motivations saying that Iran is "so insistent" on a nuclear program because there is a "huge symbolic importance for Iran, allowing it to affirm, to itself and to the world, that it is an advanced and sovereign nation." The Simon Wiesenthal Center sees Iran's motivations another way: "If Iran's only goal was to develop a nuclear ability for civilians use, as it claims, then it has no need for centrifuges and heavy water - these are only needed to create a nuclear weapon. There are 19 countries in the world from Canada to Indonesia that produce nuclear energy for civilian use without enrichment, centrifuges and heavy water." Lastly, The Washington Post says that "setting off a nuclear bomb in Israel would guarantee the Iranian regime's immediate and total destruction." My question to the Post is, by whose hand? The United States, under the current administration, has backed away from many a confrontation and in regards to Iran, they just arguably took a position of strength and turned it into a position of weakness, just to make a deal. Not exactly the sign of a side that would respond decisively in a military fashion. Michael Berenhaus cc: Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Simon Wiesenthal Center

Published in Washington Jewish Week

http://digital.washingtonjewishweek.com/i/221928/17 Dear Editor, DCJCC artistic director Ari Roth defends his recent selection of "The Admission", a fictional play which everyone agrees depicts Israel in a very unfavorable light, to be shown at the DCJCC [ "Controversy at Theater J." (11/21/13)]. Mr. Roth states, with respect to Israel, that "Art can be the gateway to a mature engagement with the country and with each other as we celebrate and grapple with its founding." And that is the essence of Ari Roth’s thesis: to project his personal grappling of the founding of Israel in his selection of plays. And this is who the DCJCC has chosen to curate? He further states that Art "has the potential to make us more humane..." which further illustrates his problem with Israel. If we need to be "more humane" about Israel, then he implies that we are less humane in our current thinking about Israel. If there ever was an anti-Israel artistic director, Ari Roth wins the prize. It is a fact that Mr. Roth has turned down at least one play by a well-regarded playwright who had his plays performed throughout America. The play, "A Tiny Piece of Land", happens to be Pro-Israel. If Mr. Roth is so bent on airing his problems with Israel, perhaps he should work at a Palestinian Community Center. Michael Berenhaus