Concerning Stephen Appell’s letter (“Distorted Israel/Palestine History,” 1/1-15/24 TPP) on my column “Reaping What’s Been Sown” (12/1/23 TPP), a few points need to be made.
First of all, the claim that Truman friend Edward Jacobson’s reputed influence on the president’s Israel policy is “a myth” is incorrect. In his Pulitzer Prize-winning 1992 Truman biography, the late David McCullough called Jacobson’s role one of “unusual importance.” Harry Truman himself went further; according to McCullough, he maintained after the fact that Jacobson’s contribution to his decision making on Israel was of “decisive importance.”
Truman was no Zionist. In fact, he resented the political pressure extreme American Zionists were putting on him. His and Jacobson’s shared motivation for pursuing a Jewish homeland in Palestine was primarily based on humanitarian, not ideological, grounds — the establishment of a refuge for survivors of the Holocaust, a destination for displaced persons who either couldn’t or wouldn’t return to their countries of origin.
To that end, beginning in 1946, Jacobson acted as facilitator for Jewish groups anxious to make their homeland case to Truman, shepherding them to White House meetings with the president. Jacobson’s key accomplishment as mediator was arranging a secret visit by Chaim Weizmann, future Israeli president, when Truman’s final determination on recognizing Israel was still in doubt (the other option, favored by the British, was a temporary UN trusteeship); their confab sealed the deal for statehood.
On Great Britain’s inconsistent application of the Balfour Declaration under the mandate, the British did honor their homeland commitment for nearly two decades leading up to the 1939 White Paper limiting Jewish immigration to Palestine. Prior to the White Paper (issued to reduce rising Arab-Jewish tensions), 300,000 Jewish settlers were granted access to Palestine in the 1920s and 1930s, considerably altering the country’s ethnic population balance.
As for the whole question of the “rightful historical occupants of the land,” one perceptive observation was provided in 1956 by General Moshe Dayan, war hero and chief of staff of the Israeli military. Dayan said the following as part of a remarkable eulogy for a fallen Israeli security officer that was reprinted recently in the New York Times: “What can we say against their [the Palestinians’] terrible hatred for us? For eight years now, they have sat in the refugee camps of Gaza and watched how, before their very eyes, we have turned their land and villages, where they and their forefathers previously dwelled, into our home.”
Dayan, a conciliator, was briefly part of the Begin government in the 1970s; he resigned over its excessively hard-line West Bank policies. His early death in 1981 deprived the peace process of a potential force for reconciliation.
Finally, my column clearly condemned the Hamas killings of Oct. 7 at the very beginning. For whatever reason, Mr. Appell chose not to recognize that fact.
WAYNE M. O’LEARY, Orono, Maine
Full disclosure, I was reared a Roman Catholic and was observant until my thirties. By that time, I had studied church history to the point that I could no longer stomach the ridiculous hypocrisy. First of all, I was expected to suspend my disbelief and accept the fact that I was never to push back on the idea that certain men were able to assert, without any empirical evidence, that they spoke for God. In my teens, I was plucked out of a perfectly fun arts and crafts class and tasked to teach communion-preparation classes. As a budding literary analyst, I began taking the Bible more seriously after that and took on a summer school project of reading the Bible from cover to cover. (The Old Testament seemed to me to be ancient Jewish creation mythology, folk lore, a bit of history, some wisdom, and the Ten Commandments, which were okay for its time but were a little better that the old Hammurabi Code. The New Testament contained an upgrade to the Beatitudes — Christ’s mandate. I am now philosophically a Beatitudes Christian.)
In the 12/15/23 TPP, a religious deacon wrote an op-ed criticizing the pejorative that the columnist Frank Lingo used while criticizing Pope Benedict IV for his protection of pedophile priests and supported his good opinion of Benedict with a blurb from the Vatican listing all of Benedict’s fine accomplishments. If he had studied the history of the Catholic Church like I have, he would know that the Curia of the church has always been an absolutely corrupt political group. As a matter of fact, all conservative “Christians” are corrupt because they have never represented what Christ actually taught; Christ was murdered because he stood up to the vicious conservative Jewish leadership (like Netanyahu) of his time.
If the word “prick” was too crass for the deacon, perhaps he should avoid learning the language that the parents whose children’s lives were forever scarred, or the expletives of the women and families whose lives are being destroyed by the arrogant presumptuousness of forcing their corrupt conservative nonsense on women. The whole purpose of this disgusting rapaciousness is to maintain power, especially power over women.
The part of the report from the Vatican hiding behind the thin line of Holy Smoke that the deacon missed was that these pedophiles were not removed from society and jailed as any other pervert would be, not because they were not as guilty, but because, like Trump, they were special and were entitled to special treatment. We see you there. Don’t expect us to be nice.
P. ANN WHITE, Meridian, Texas
A recent United Nations report documents 10,000 Ukrainian civilian deaths due to Russia’s aggressive war. That number is dwarfed by an estimated 15,000 Palestinian civilians killed in Israel’s military response to Hamas’ 1,200 murders Oct. 7. How then should we characterize the deaths of nearly 319,000 American civilians by what Brown University medical researchers call “COVID-19 vaccine-preventable deaths?” This devastating number is higher than a previous estimate by the US Centers for Disease Control, and Harvard School of Public Health, that 232,000 American deaths could have been prevented had the deceased been vaccinated.
“All of this comes down to trust — whether the political leadership creates a climate of trust in public health agencies’ efforts, in the science,” says Dr. Thomas Tsai, co-author of Harvard’s analysis.
This deadly legacy is the crime for which Donald Trump’s anti-vaccine, anti-mask, anti-science harangues must disqualify him from holding public office ever again.
BRUCE JOFFE, Piedmont, Calif.
Cecelia Delambre’s letter to the editor (“Jill Stein Comes Off the Bench”) in the 12/15/23 TPP would make sense if only Democrats and Republicans were permitted to run for office. Fortunately, in a country like ours, anyone can give it a try, but the myth endures that third party and independent candidates only muck it up for the “serious” candidates.
Perhaps Ms. Delambre’s Democrats should be offering us better policies that we progressives can vote for, like Medicare For All, a living minimum wage, or an end to the wasteful wars instead of worrying so much about Donald Trump.
GARY CRONIN, West Babylon, N.Y.
Oaths of office have the power, ethically if not legally, to bind public servants to their obligations to the voters, as well as to our system of democratic governance. We all know now that an oath won’t stop the most determined sociopaths from wreaking havoc, and it only takes a few, or one, to do so.
But what if we also required an oath at the beginning of a candidacy? There should be rules and norms of running for office that any candidate with a conscience would feel at pains to obey. Again, the sociopaths wouldn’t care about the restrictions of an oath, but in their wanton disregard for any oath, they would self-identify as unfit for office before voting begins.
An oath of candidacy would set down rules of conduct, such as:
• No name-calling or accusations without factual basis.
• No lying about one’s record, background, or qualifications
• Revealing the true sources of all campaign donations before voting begins.
• Vowing to abide by and accept the results of the election.
• Contesting close election results only through legal means, and accepting the verdict of the courts.
• Vigorously discouraging and condemning violence and threats against opponents.
To stanch the flow of grifter “populists” into our political system, it would be better to restrict the flow of the dark money that lures them in. But that’s a very tough hill to climb, due to the long train of pro-corporate Supreme Court decisions, starting with Buckley v. Valeo.
But an oath of candidacy would provide somewhat of a buffer for democracy and an advance warning to voters.
JEFFREY HOBBS, Springfield, Ill.
The article titled “Facing Financial Ruin as Costs Soar for Elder Care” by Reed Abelson and Jordan Rau (12/15/23 TPP) documents the shameful lack of long-term health care for the nation’s elderly. One factor for this deplorable situation facing elderly people is that in the US economic and social rights are not generally deemed to be human rights. The public discourse on human rights in the US is limited to political and civil rights.
The UN’s International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1976) incorporates the right to health care, a decent standard of living, education and other rights. Unfortunately, although President Ford approved this Covenant, it was never ratified by the US Senate. The US did sign the UN Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, which does include economic and social rights, but the US Supreme Court has held international law is not binding on US courts.
A number of US states do incorporate the right of public school students to a quality education, under their state constitutions. Numerous countries have placed economic and social rights in their constitutions. What is needed is recognition in the US that economic and social rights are human rights made made mandatory in state and federal law.
JIM PHILLIPS, Wichita, Kansas
Sorry to read of the passing of Tom Conway, the International President of the United Steelworkers. nnI would read one of his articles and get a good feeling, being a longtime union construction worker myself.
Then I see who wrote it. “Oh yeah, that guy.” Always a great article.
S.D. ROSENBAUM, New York, N.Y.
Editor Notes: We’re glad Tom Conway’s successor as USW International President, David McCall, has chosen to continue the column.
From The Progressive Populist, February 1, 2024
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