Jimmy Carter, Gaza and me (Discussion 2) - Further Comments

In my last post entitled "Jimmy Carter, Gaza and me (Discussion 2)" I wrote in response to Albert Nekimken’s arguments:

“But before I truly launch into your “presentation”, I have to express my shock at your response earlier to my sending you an article from the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, entitled: "Thousands of Israeli Holocaust survivors still living in poverty.” It seems to me that nothing can be more damming to a Nation founded on the basis that Holocaust survivors need a refuge, if it can’t even take care of this dwindling group. Where is its moral compass?”

and referring to Albert Nekimken's comments I wrote further:

“Your response was:

 The situation of poverty and neglect among Holocaust survivors is a simple scandal that must be remedied, and should have been remedied many years ago. Who exactly is to blame, I couldn't say.

 To which I replied:

 “But who is to blame, - is it not enough to agree that Israel or its government, which is the same thing, is to blame. You suggested "Netanyahu’s tenure as finance minister is to blame when he turned the Israeli economy toward the free market” or at least that the newspaper Haaretz makes that claim. But isn't it obvious that there is money for the settler movement; there is money for the Haredim; but there is no money for Holocaust survivors. What an indictment of the values of the people who govern Israel.

 “And there are many decent Israelis who would not agree with you or the policies of its government. Unfortunately, they appear to be in a minority.”

At this point I just want to share with my readers the article from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz upon which my commnets about Holocaust survivors were based:

Thousands of Israeli Holocaust survivors still living in poverty, fighting for recognition

Seventy years after the end of WWII, some 20,000 aging Holocaust survivors receive little or no support from Israel, and 45,000 live under poverty line.

 Luta “Lusha” Brachfeld was 3.5 years old when Nazi Germany invaded her native Poland in September 1939. Her memories of World War II are few and fragmentary, but no less horrifying. She remembers “buildings collapsing as if they were made of matchsticks” during the three-week terror bombing of Warsaw by the Luftwaffe, which still gives her panic attacks every time an air-raid siren sounds – not an unheard-of event in Israel.

 She remembers the color and texture of her paternal grandfather’s trousers, as he often bounced her on his knees. And she remembers seeing those same legs dangling in the air when she found that he had hanged himself in desperation.

 She remembers the hunger and crush of people in the early days of the Warsaw Ghetto, where her family lived on Mila Street – a few steps from number 18, soon to become the headquarters of the 1943 revolt against the Nazis.

 She also remembers being carried by her mother on a desperate flight in the snow toward the Soviet Union, where she and her family survived as refugees.

 It is partly because of the way in which she escaped death that, today, this 79-year-old widow and grandmother of three is forced to fight an uphill battle in the Israeli courts to receive the same state support given to other Holocaust survivors.

 On the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel on Thursday, and 70 years after the end of World War II, survivors and groups that represent them say the complexities of Israeli law have created inequalities in the benefits given to Holocaust victims.

 Despite a new law passed last year that increased the funds and services granted to Holocaust survivors, they say that 1 in 4 survivors in Israel live in poverty, and some 20,000 are unrecognized or only partially supported by the state.

 According to a report published on Monday by the Foundation for the Benefit of Holocaust Victims in Israel, there are some 189,000 Holocaust survivors in Israel, two-thirds of them female. On average, 14,200 die each year – nearly 40 per day. Some 45,000 have an income of less than 3,000 shekels ($760) per month, putting them below the poverty line, the report says. That marks a slight improvement from the 50,000 impoverished survivors that were counted last year.

 According to the Claims Conference, worldwide there are some 500,000 Jewish Holocaust survivors alive today, mostly in Israel and the United States. The figure includes those who fled due to Nazi persecution or suffered from various restrictions on liberty. About 20 percent were in camps, ghettos or in hiding under Nazi occupation.

 Until recently, only survivors who had immigrated to Israel before 1953 automatically received a monthly pension, regardless of their individual experiences during the Holocaust. Those who arrived later were not entitled to benefits.

 This situation was partially amended last year, when a law spearheaded by then-Finance Minister Yair Lapid allocated an additional one billion shekels ($254 million) per year to survivors and granted them other benefits, including a total exemption on all medical costs and subsidized psychological treatment.

 The law also granted equal treatment to survivors who had immigrated to Israel after 1953 – but only if they had been in concentration camps or ghettos.Brachfeld, who emigrated to Israel after 1953, has gone to court to have her rights recognized. She must now prove to a judge that she lived in the Warsaw Ghetto after it was officially established in October 1940. That is difficult, because her mother never revealed to her when and how she managed to flee the city, and “they didn’t exactly give you a certificate when you escaped from the Ghetto,” as Brachfeld tells Haaretz.

 All Brachfeld remembers is crossing into Soviet-occupied eastern Poland sometime before Hitler launched his invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941.

 “We were in a field completely covered in snow and there were three Russian soldiers who were gesturing with their rifles, telling us to go back,” she recalls. “I went up to one of them and said, ‘But sir, my hands are so cold.’ And that saved us – they let us pass.”

 Brachfeld spent the rest of the war mostly in the Urals, where her father, who had fled at the start of the war, worked in a tank factory. They returned to Poland after the war, but, disgusted with the persistent anti-Semitism there, moved to Israel in 1956, where the 20-year-old Brachfeld built her family and worked as an X-Ray technician.

 Lapid’s new law has helped many people, but by restricting benefits for post-1953 immigrants to survivors of camps and ghettos, it has largely left out an estimated 20,000 survivors who went through different, but no less painful, experiences, says Colette Avital, chair of the Center of Organizations of Holocaust Survivors in Israel.

 These include Polish Jews like Brachfeld, who were forced to flee to the Soviet Union – as well as thousands of Romanian Jews who were not deported to camps but went through pogroms and were pressed into forced labor, Avital tells Haaretz. There are also thousands of Sephardi Jews who were persecuted in North Africa and the Middle East by Germany’s allies and pro-Nazi regimes.

 Painful disparity

 Under the new Israeli law, some of these survivors qualify for an annual pension of 3,600 shekels. This is much less than what the state allocates for most survivors – a monthly stipend that starts from 2,200 shekels and increases according to degree of disability. This disparity occurs even with members of the same family who lived through the same circumstances but arrived in Israel at different times.

 Dita Greenberg, a 75-year-old survivor from northern Romania, was scheduled to be deported to Trasnistria shortly after her birth. But with the help of a neighbor, she and some of her family members escaped and spent the rest of the war hiding out at the home of relatives in the city of Botosani.

 “We were on the deportation lists, so we lived in fear of being denounced by anyone, even a Jewish neighbor,” Greenberg recalls. “We never left the house. Even when I was sick with dysentery and a lung infection, they were too afraid to call a doctor for me.”

 Her cousin Chaim, who was in hiding with them, came to Israel in 1951 and receives a monthly pension. But Greenberg does not qualify for the same benefits because she stayed on in Romania to care for her ailing father and was only able to leave the country in 1988.

“We have the same biography, and when I went to court, the judge told me that he recognizes my suffering but said in Latin, ‘Dura lex, sed lex’ – the law is harsh, but it is the law.”

 Avital notes that this disparity is particularly painful because it concerns people who are more in need of the state’s support, mainly recent immigrants from former Communist regimes. “Many came as elderly people, who didn’t bring with them pension rights and who couldn’t work anymore,” explains Avital. “People who lived behind the Iron Curtain were punished twice: first in the war; and then because they were stuck living in Communist countries.”

 A former diplomat and Labor MK, Avital says she has written to the heads of all major parties asking them to amend the law. She hopes the new government will take steps to give all survivors the same benefits.

 “There is very little time left, their numbers are decreasing but their needs are increasing,” she notes. “Many cannot fend for themselves, they need home care, suffer from trauma, dementia, Alzheimer’s.”

 In a written response, the Finance Ministry did not address the disparity of treatment between victims. However, it stressed that, thanks to Lapid’s law, it had “independently reached out to 145,000 survivors who are eligible for stipends or benefits” and “significantly reduced the bureaucracy that was a burden for many survivors.”

 Brachfeld, the Warsaw Ghetto escapee, now lives in a small apartment in a retirement home in Tel Aviv. She says she is “not looking for pity” but just wants equal treatment for all survivors.

“My childhood was taken away from me and no one can give it back to me,” she says. “I don’t compare myself to someone who was in Auschwitz, but we are all survivors, and there shouldn’t be any discrimination between us.”

Comments, questions, or corrections are welcome, and will be responded to and distributed with attribution, unless the writer requests that he/she not be identified. However, please give your full name and the town and state in which you reside or have an office.

Jimmy Carter, Gaza and me (Discussion 2)

On May 14, 2015 I posted a commentary based on an exchange of letters to the Editor of the North Jersey newspaper, The Record. I urge you to re-read it. It appeared under the title "Jimmy Carter, Gaza and me!" On May 19, I posted comments which I had received from two of my readers. You can find those under the heading "Jimmy Carter, Gaza and me! (Discussion)." 

The first supported my view and did not call for a rebuttal but the second, from Albert Nekimken did. You may want to particularly re-read Nekimken observations.

Below you will find that rebuttal:

I  find my self at a loss as to how to respond to constantly unsourced and unsupported allegations. 

I particularly point to your holding onto the totally discredited and debunked claim that there are no Palestinians. We wave a magic wand, people disappear, and so there is no problem.

You write:

Worth noting, anyone who would who would honor a despicable terrorist in this way has disqualified himself from any further rational consideration.

I don’t know whether this is a quote and if so from whom and why it is set out here.

I don’t know what your views were (are) about all the Israeli terrorists who were instrumental in creating the State of Israel, and who eventually formed the Herut party, the predecessor of Likud. But I guess they were "good terrorists”, not to speak of the Irish Republican army, which so many Americans actively supported. But what is a little inconsistency between friends?

But before I truly launch into your “presentation”, I have to express my shock at your response earlier to my sending you an article from the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, entitled: "Thousands of Israeli Holocaust survivors still living in poverty.” It seems to me that nothing can be more damming to a Nation founded on the basis that Holocaust survivors need a refuge, if it can’t even take care of this dwindling group. Where is its moral compass?

Your response was:

The situation of poverty and neglect among Holocaust survivors is a simple scandal that must be remedied, and should have been remedied many years ago. Who exactly is to blame, I couldn't say.

But who is to blame, - is it not enough to agree that Israel or its government, which is the same thing, is to blame. You suggested "Netanyahu’s tenure as finance minister is to blame when he turned the Israeli economy toward the free market” or at least that the newspaper Haaretz makes that claim. But isn't it obvious that there is money for the settler movement; there is money for the Haredim; but there is no money for Holocaust survivors. What an indictment of the values of the people who govern Israel.

And there are many decent Israeli’s who would not agree with you or the policies of its government. Unfortunately, they appear to be in a minority.

I am responding further to your message by interlineating my comments into your text in red.

Worth noting, anyone who would who would honor a despicable terrorist in this way has disqualified himself from any further rational consideration.

 Earlier in the day, Carter, 90, visited Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah and laid a wreath on the grave of former leader Yasser Arafat. 

 The writer asks: (This refers to the Letter to the Editor to which I responded)  "Has he [Carter] ever asked where the billions of dollars sent in aid to the governments in Gaza have gone?"

I am now quoting Nekimken with all my comments appearing in Red. 

You (this refers to me) wrote “Just about a month ago, on April 13, the Jerusalem Post had this headline: ‘International donors fail to deliver promised aid to Gaza.’ And besides, the Israeli blockade makes it all but impossible for building materials to be delivered.”

 Your reply ignores several cogent points, including:

Israel has intercepted bags of cash provided by Iran entering the Gaza Strip to pay Hamas employees Source please!, without which support for Hamas would likely collapse. and if Hamas collapsed, would Israel then re-occupy or would they turn it over to the hated P.L.O.?

2. Europe and the EU have supplied the PA with billions of dollars over recent decades. Source please! 

It is entirely the fault of Hamas (why? how?) that whatever is left of this money after the huge amounts siphoned off by corrupt Fatah officials Source please  has not been transferred to the Gaza Strip.

3. Israel has, in fact, permitted the import of some building materials, Source please but must attempt to prevent them  from being diverted How? (as they had been in the past) to building tunnels that Hamas used to attack Israel. I thought Israel was attacked with rockets! Israel’s blockade under International Law is the continuance of war. Why does it have to be asymmetrical?  Israel wages war - good war! Hamas fights back - bad terror!!! Has Israel tried to negotiate peace with Hamas. NO!!! It is terrorist organization. Resistance bad – terror! Weren’t resistance fighters against the Nazis terrorists? 

You (Emil Scheller) wrote:

Why should an oppressed people give recognition to their oppressors? The PLO has recognized Israel's right to exist and what has it gotten in return?

The answer:

"Because after multiple wars intended to obliterate Israel, the Palestinians have lost. Now it is time to reconcile and build for the future." Their "oppression" could have been ended long ago if not for the cynical manipulation of Palestinians by their own leaders and for their own enrichment. The PLO's "acceptance" of Israel is/was meaningless so long as the PA, which is the titular Palestinian government refuses to acknowledge Israel's status as a Jewish state

This is a new requirement intended to keep raising the bar.

or, more properly, a state for the Jewish people. To avoid doing so reflects their continuing desire to transform the Jewish state into an Arab Palestinian state, which exposes "acceptance" as a mere tactic for foreign consumption.

(It implies that if Palestinians should become a majority, they would be denied their rights as citizens, and at the least makes them less than citizens. This was never a requirement in all the years since the State of Israel was founded in 1948. Why now? What would be your reaction to a proposal that the US should be declared a Christian nation?

More to the point, so long as suicide bombers infiltrate from the West Bank (thwarted only by the security wall) and rockets fly from Gaza, "acceptance" remains a hollow joke. What did "acceptance" get the PLO? Nothing, because there was no real acceptance and  because the only thing they can hope to get is peace, which is the most precious element for people who love life.

Peace under occupation is not peace!!!! Did the French, the Dutch, the Poles, etc. have peace under the Nazis? Or even the people in the colonies of Britain or of the Dutch, etc. They demanded statehood and until they got it there could be no peace.

AS for Israel's democracy and a vote for Palestinians, Caroline Glick believes that, after Israel annexes the West Bank, all Arabs who wish to become full Israeli citizens should be offered a path to citizenship. She offers compelling evidence that the risk is worth taking for both sides. Unfortunately, this solution has not attracted much interest anywhere so far as I can tell. The alternative is a demilitarized Palestinian "state" with limited scope of action.

You and I and the whole world knows that this is still more of the creation of a Vichy style government.

Now, you will ask "Why does Israel (the oppressor) have the right to dictate terms to the Palestinians (as the oppressed)?" The answer is obvious: because Israel is determined to safeguard its people and its national existence based on residence in its own territory and, as noted previously, its "rights" have been paid for in blood through several wars-if not millennia.

I guess what you are saying that since Jews have suffered through millennia, they are not bound by any moral compass that might apply to others.

Mere residence in a territory does not automatically create a "right" to political sovereignty. (Ask the Kurds who have lived in place for a thousand years without independent sovereignty.)

Indeed, and I would, as I trust you would, support their aspirations for their independence. All the colonial peoples, from India to Algeria, to Indonesia, have won their sovereignty. Were you opposed to their aspirations? 

And, as noted in prior comments, because the population of Jordan is at least 60% Palestinian, it is the de facto Palestinian state, whether anyone wants to recognize it as such, or not.

As for whether or not Israel is a democracy, let the kettle not call the pot black. Every democracy in the world, including the U.S., is a work in progress. Israel has made admirable progress in a few short decades, even if there is more to be done.

 Unfortunately, Israel has not made progress, it is going backwards.

Comments, questions, or corrections are welcome, and will be responded to and distributed with attribution, unless the writer requests that he/she not be identified. However, please give your full name and the town and state in which you reside or have an office.

  

Jimmy Carter, Gaza and me!

On Sunday, May 3^rd an article appeared in my local newspaper, The Record, entitled "Carter calls life in Gaza 'intolerable'."

I reproduce the article below:

Since the clipping is difficult to read I reproduce the text below:

Carter calls life in Gaza 'intolerable'

 Former US president Jimmy Carter said Saturday that eight months after a bloody war in the Gaza Strip the situation there remains “intolerable”. 

 Carter and his delegation were supposed to visit the isolated territory but earlier this week called it off, citing unspecified security concerns. 

 Speaking to reporters in Jerusalem, Carter said he was still determined to work for a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. 

 “What we have seen and heard only strengthens our determination to work for peace,” he said. “The situation in Gaza is intolerable. Eight months after a devastating war, not one destroyed house has been rebuilt and people cannot live with the respect and dignity they deserve.” 

 More than 2,000 Palestinians were killed in the 50-day summer war between Israeli forces and Hamas militants who fired rockets into Israel.  

Earlier in the day, Carter, 90, visited Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah and laid a wreath on the grave of former leader Yasser Arafat. 

 Although he brokered the first Israeli-Arab peace treaty during his presidency, Carter outraged many Israelis with his 2006 book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid." He's also repeatedly reached out to Gaza's Islamic Hamas leaders, considered terrorists by much of the West. 

 Carter met with a group of Israelis living in towns bordering Gaza and heard about life under the threat of rocket attacks and militant infiltrations from Gaza. 

 He said that he had no interest in meeting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has ignored him in the past. 

 "This time we decided it was a waste of time to ask," Carter said. "As long as he is in charge, there will be no two-state solution and therefore no Palestinian state." 

On May 5^th the inevitable outrage of anything that is critical of Israel appeared in the Record as a Letter to the Editor. I reproduce it below:

Once again the clipping is hard to read and so I transcribe it below:

Carter’s views show ignorance

 Regarding "Carter calls life in Gaza 'Intolerable' (PageA-l6, May 3)":

So, former President Jimmy Carter asserts not one destroyed house has been rebuilt" In Gaza. Has he ever asked where the billions of dollars sent in aid to the governments in Gaza or the West Bank have gone or are going?

 The apologist for terrorists will not visit Gaza, citing "unspecified security concerns." From the terrorists he has championed? When has Carter condemned the suicide bombings of innocent civilians or the sheltering of rocket launchers at hospitals and schools ?

 And when has he denounced Hamas' refusal to accept the state of Israel? Yet he castigates Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying there will be no two-state solution "as long as he is in charge." The Israeli people put him in charge. So Carter would have him removed? Marginalized?

 Carter is an embarrassment to the office of president of the United States. And yet, again, what is more shameful, our foreign policy leaders, including the current president, Secretary of State John Kerry and members of Congress, do not condemn him for aiding and comforting terrorists and eviscerating the hopes and dreams of people for peace in the Middle East.

 David Molk

This letter produced an immediate reaction on my part prompting me to take pen to paper, or rather fingers to keyboard,  and caused this reply to appear in the Record on May 10, 2015.

Once again its transcription follows:

Carter's work has aided Israel security

 Regarding "Carter's views show ignorance" (Your Views, May 5):

 The writer accuses former President Jimmy Carter of showing ignorance, but instead it is the ignorance of the writer that comes through.

 The writer asks: "Has he [Carter] ever asked where the billions of dollars sent in aid to the governments in Gaza have gone?"

 Just about a month ago, on April 13, the Jerusalem Post had this headline: "International donors fail to deliver promised aid to Gaza." And besides, the Israeli blockade makes it all but impossible for building materials to be delivered.

 The writer repeats the propaganda of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee by asking if Carter has denounced Hamas' refusal to accept the state of Israel.

 But acceptance is a two-way street. The writer ought to ask when will Israel agree to recognize a Palestinian state or its right to exist? Why should an oppressed people give recognition to their oppressors? The PLO has recognized Israel's right to exist and what has it gotten in return?

Carter probably has done more for the security of Israel than any other person by brokering peace between Egypt and Israel. In return he gets only hatred, because he rightly criticizes Israeli policy toward the Palestinians.

 The Israeli people chose Benjamin Netanyahu as their prime minister in the recent election. But in a democracy the people are sovereign. but not necessarily wise, and with Palestinians in the occupied territories unable to vote in Israeli elections, it puts into question whether Israel is, in fact, a democracy.

 Emil Scheller 

Fort Lee, May 8

Comments, questions, or corrections are welcome, and will be responded to and distributed with attribution, unless the writer requests that he/she not be identified. However, please give your full name and the town and state in which you reside or have an office. 

People Can’t Seem To Get Their Facts Right! (Comments)

On April 6th, 2015 I posted a commentary on my blog entitled "People Can’t Seem To Get Their Facts Right!" where I re- published a letter that had appeared in the North Jersey newspaper the Record and which, as is so often the case these days, had set forth totally erroneous facts.

I took the letter writer to task and published the incontrovertible facts.

Both letters were re--produced in my post together with transcriptions of their contents. I urge the reader to read, or re-read my post, that can be found here.

After the post was distributed Albert Nekimken of Vienna, Virginia posted a comment directly to my blog and the comment can be found there but to save the reader to trouble of accessing the earlier blog entry I transcribe his comments here:

To describe Mr. Scheller as a "stickler for details" is likely an understatement. Yet, he probably omitted a few additional instances when American presidents lost patience with Israel's refusal to bend to U.S. leadership. ...And then there are the series of incidents involving Israeli spying on the U.S., most recently its alleged spying on the U.S.-Iran negotiations. Just as spying among friends reflects business as usual, Obama and Netanyahu appear to have a realistic assessment of each other, their respective political situations and their views on the Middle Eastern neighborhood. Both Obama and Netanyahu have been faulted mercilessly by critics over their public disagreement with how to proceed with Iran negotiations, but this is highly unlikely to undermine the fundamental working relationship between the two countries.

It's worth noting that the U.S. spent the past month upgrading and testing its arsenal of bunker-buster conventional bombs that, in the present geopolitical context, have only one identifiable target.

I also received a comment from Stephen Baird, MD of Solana Beach, California who made the following observation.

You do have your facts straight.  As a note added in proof, I attended a series of lectures two weeks ago by Dr. Jacob Goldberg, currently a Professor in Israel, who was also an adviser to Ehud Barak when he was Prime Minister of Israel.  Goldberg gives a series of lectures on the Middle East every year at the San Diego Jewish Community Center.  This year he concentrated on the negotiations with Iran over the possible development of a nuclear weapon and on the Israeli elections.  One of the "facts" he noted was that the last five years have represented the best ever in US-Israeli cooperation on matters of security.  The idea that President Obama hates Israel is just mythology.  True, he doesn't like Prime Minister Netanyahu but lots of Israelis don't either.  What Bibi did just before the polls closed by putting out a TV ad noting that Arabs were voting in droves was just despicable.  Perhaps President Obama's antipathy to Bibi is entirely justified.

Additional comments, questions, or corrections are welcome, and will be responded to and distributed with attribution, unless the writer requests that he/she not be identified. However, please give your full name and the town and state in which you reside or have an office.

People Can’t Seem To Get Their Facts Right!

Not long ago a Letter to the Editor appeared in the North Jersey Record. I reproduce it below:

Since it may be difficult to read, as reproduced from the newspaper I set forth the text below:

U.S. needs all the friends it can get

 Two things really trouble me.

 One is that the United States always stood by the mantra of “We do not negotiate with terrorists."

 Iran is a main player in terrorism. Our sanctions are really doing the job. We should stay the course and make them come to us for a deal.

 Also, Israel and the United States shared a great friendship under the leadership of every past president, except President Obama, who seems determined to change that relationship.

 These are very dangerous times with terrorist groups popping up everywhere. We need to keep every friend we have if we are going to win this battle.

 Sam Levine 

Oakland, March 25

Since the facts set forth in this letter were flagrantly erroneous, and since I am a stickler for factual accuracy I dispatched a Letter to the Editor of the Record a reproduction of which appears below.

As I indicated above, the reproduction may be difficult to read and so I reproduce the text below:

U.S.- Iran Negotiations 

 Regarding "U.S. needs all the friends it can get": 

 The letter writer shows ignorance of the relevant facts.

 He writes "Israel and the United States shared a great friendship under the leadership of every past president..." 

 That isn't true. 

 In 1956, President Dwight Eisenhower threatened to cut off private donations to Israel, along with other measures, including ending military assistance. In 1975, President Gerald Ford ordered arms deliveries to Israel frozen and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger ordered Israel to be put "at the bottom of the list." President Ronald Reagan in 1985 told reporters "the bloodshed must stop," adding, "I lost patience a long time ago." One year earlier, the United States voted to condemn Israel at the Security Council and temporarily blocked the sale of four F-16s to Jerusalem. And in 1991, President George H.W. Bush didn't want to guarantee loans unless the Israelis promised not to build housing over the so-called Green Line. 

 The non-partisan Foreign Policy magazine
 headlined an article two years ago with "Obama has been great for Israel - anyone who tells you otherwise is distorting reality." 

 As for Iran, the writer says, "We should ... make them come to us for a deal."That is exactly what has happened. They have come to us for a deal. Now we need to consummate it, rather than lose the opportunity. Are there any realistic alternatives? 

 Emil Scheller 

Fort Lee, March 30 

As usual, comments, questions, or corrections are welcome, and will be responded to and distributed with attribution, unless the writer requests that he/she not be identified. However, please give your full name and the town and state in which you reside or have an office.