To the Editor:
Re “American Jews in the Age of Palestine,” by Peter Beinart (Opinion visitor essay, March 24):
There’s a basic flaw within the article. Zionism doesn’t require backing the Israeli authorities; it does assume backing for the State of Israel.
The nation is and has been divided, and selecting to assist the liberal components of Israeli society, throughout a interval when the extremely proper controls the federal government, just isn’t a rupture. It’s a option to assist what many people imagine to be Jewish values, with the domination of the Palestinians being un-Jewish.
Sure, there’s a rupture between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Jewish diaspora, however that doesn’t translate to a rupture with Israel, at the least not but.
Steven Goldberg
Brooklyn
To the Editor:
Peter Beinart claims that the Anti-Defamation League is aligning itself with “Republicans who wish to silence ‘woke’ activists on campus.” That’s a distortion of our report. Since 1913, the ADL has hewed to a strictly nonpartisan technique in calling out antisemitism — whether or not it emanates from the far left or the acute proper, or anyplace in between.
Furthermore, Mr. Beinart’s assertion that we’re stifling pro-Palestinian speech is ludicrous. Since Oct. 7, there have been at the least 2,874 anti-Israel rallies throughout the U.S., many held on or close to campuses. There’s no scarcity of sit-ins, opinion essays, protests and different public manifestations on behalf of the Palestinian trigger.
College students are entitled to their First Modification proper to protest, however when free speech devolves into intimidation and threats, we should name it out with out hesitation. At stake are the security and safety of Jewish college students.
Jonathan A. Greenblatt
New York
The author is C.E.O. and nationwide director of the Anti-Defamation League.
To the Editor:
I’m an American Jew who might be each liberal relating to American politics and Zionist in my assist for Israel. There isn’t any battle in my place.
America and Israel are each democratic liberal states. Hamas is a radical, violent militant group that could be a menace to Israel and hardly created a haven for the Palestinians who dwell beneath its rule.
I’d assist a liberal Palestinian state and hope it should at some point emerge to obtain the loyalty and assist of Palestinians wherever they now dwell. However liberal states should be shaped by a folks united by a willingness to abide by a rule of regulation.
A Jewish state has been so shaped in Israel, and is now defending its sovereignty in opposition to brutal assaults by terrorists, whereas we within the U.S. cope with forces of chaos in our political system that threaten our rights and liberties.
I wish to defend liberalism in my nation and Zionism for these Israelis who’re defending their nation.
Doris Effective
Berkeley, Calif.
To the Editor:
Peter Beinart’s essay reminds us all of an important level: Israel-Palestine will stay the house of thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of Jews and Palestinians. Any proposed resolution should grapple with that central reality.
Jeremy Pressman
West Hartford, Conn.
The author is a professor of political science and the director of Center East research on the College of Connecticut. He’s the creator of “The Sword Is Not Sufficient: Arabs, Israelis and the Limits of Army Power.”
M.I.T. and the Gaza Conflict
To the Editor:
It’s on behalf of 30 M.I.T. school members from numerous disciplines that we write to handle latest occasions at M.I.T. regarding the warfare in Gaza.
Antisemitism is rising nationally and on our campus, necessitating pressing schooling about its origins and practices. However accusations of antisemitism are used to suppress free speech, notably in assist of Palestinian rights.
M.I.T. college students advocating Palestinian liberation face doxxing, threats and false labeling as “pro-Hamas.” Criticism of Israel’s authorities is wrongly equated with antisemitism, suppressing speech for Palestinian rights.
Biased media protection has remoted and created concern amongst Jewish students who assist a cease-fire. This concern extends to Arab, Muslim and Palestinian communities.
As an educational establishment, M.I.T. should prioritize tough conversations, reflection and studying over suppression and intimidation. We should foster an inclusive setting that promotes dialogue and understanding.
We should handle rising antisemitism and the suppression of free speech with out perpetuating concern. M.I.T. ought to attempt for a respectful setting that encourages open dialogue and helps the rights, humanity and dignity of all communities. No Palestinian exception.
Michel DeGraff
Tanalís Padilla
The writers are professors on the Massachusetts Institute of Know-how.
A Pig Supplies Hope for Transplant Sufferers
To the Editor:
Re “Patient Mends After Receiving a Pig’s Kidney” (entrance web page, March 22):
As one who spent a lot of my profession as a spokesperson for an internationally famend organ transplant heart, I learn the information of the pig kidney transplant with nice curiosity.
Again within the mid-Eighties and into the ’90s, I labored with many sufferers’ households determined to each elevate the cash essential to pay for then often-uninsured transplants and generate sufficient consciousness to acquire horrendously scarce donor organs. I can’t inform you what number of households cracked beneath the strain.
Phrases from pioneering surgeons and different scientists concerning the future risk of utilizing animal organs (even then, often pigs) have been of small consolation to folks needing assist then. And never 30 years therefore.
However possibly, simply possibly, this information out of Boston a couple of transplant from a genetically modified pig could also be what so many have been ready for all these years. For the sake of these wanting to do almost something to save lots of their little one, partner or father or mother, I hope the real worries about such procedures show to be minimal.
For those who’ve ever seen a father or mother lose a toddler as a result of an organ wasn’t accessible, you’d share this hope too.
Mary Stanik
Tucson, Ariz.
Sexual Brutality
To the Editor:
Re “Looking Away From an Epidemic of Rape,” by Maebel Gebremedhin (Opinion visitor essay, March 22):
As a Marine Corps and an O.S.S. officer combating the Nazi occupation of Yugoslavia, my father, the actor and author Sterling Hayden, witnessed lots of the most grotesque realities of warfare. However there was one occasion that I imagine scarred his psyche extra profoundly than another.
One night, together with a gaggle of Josip Broz Tito’s Partisan fighters, he entered a small village that had been razed by the Ustashe, the fascist Croatian militia allied with the Germans. Years later he would describe what they discovered:
“Not a home stands, nothing however burned stone shells of chimneys gaunt beneath scorched timber and over all of the horrible stench of fried flesh and bone mingled with burned wooden. And by the financial institution of the Sava the 9 ladies all in a row the other way up they’re hung by their ankles to separate rails with legs far aside and breasts sliced off and the helves of axes and the handles of rakes rammed to the bloody hilt by areas the place life may in any other case have been conceived.”
Grotesque sexual sadism has been current in wars all through recorded historical past. That this demonic conduct erupts so typically is among the darkest indictments of the human creativeness.
David Hayden
Wilton, Conn.
