By LETTERS TO THE EDITORUpdated: NOVEMBER 29, 2017 19:59Letters(photo credit: REUTERS)Couldn’t make a living With regard to “Tel Aviv may be world’s sixth largest start-up city – but expect rank to drop” (November 28), this isn’t a problem just with non-Jews.As someone who made aliya as an adult with decades of hi-tech experience, I found that the passive-aggressive attitude toward foreigners – even Jews, and especially native-English speakers with experience – kept me from management positions in startups. I spent a few years consulting and then moved back to the US.I loved living in Israel, but I couldn’t make a living.DAVID TEICHSpokane Valley, WashingtonFallout from Amazon The news that Amazon might open a facility here (“Amazon may open up Israeli shipping center near Modi’in,” November 27) set local social media on fire.Should Amazon open a shipping center here, two amazing things could happen: Israeli businesses might have to learn to provide customer service, and those same businesses might have to lower their obscene prices in order to compete. The only better news would be proof that our current government actually cares about us.JEFFREY RAPPOPORT JerusalemAdhering to mitzvot While Jeff Barak, in his criticism of the Haredi refusal to serve in the IDF (“Netanyahu coalition is the most Haredi-friendly government in Israel’s history,” Reality Check, November 27), will find many who agree with him, myself included, his offhanded attitude to mitzva observance is self-defeating to the Zionist cause.In the centuries of living in the Diaspora, had Jews not adhered to mitzvot, the Zionist idea of returning to the Land of Israel would have died as they assimilated.A state that is a Jewish state in name only, and not in behavior, would likewise be a disappointment for all those centuries.AVIGDOR BONCHEKJerusalemNot always so easy Yaakov Katz correctly states in “How to win over Israelis” (Editor’s Notes, November 24) that the visit to Israel by Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in November 1977 had a transformative effect on Israeli public opinion, which had much to do with the subsequent peace agreement signed by Sadat and Prime Minister Menahem Begin.He also notes that there is widespread skepticism within Israel today regarding prospects for peace with the Palestinians.As mentioned by Katz, this skepticism is based on repeated experience where land ceded by Israel has been used to launch attacks on it. But the skepticism is also based on the ongoing drumbeat of rejection in Palestinian media, educational curricula and mosques as to the legitimacy of a Jewish state anywhere between “the river and the sea.” This rejection is articulated by Palestinian leaders and embraced by the Palestinian public, as vividly reflected in repeated opinion polls.The skepticism is also based on the topological reality that potential attacks from the West Bank/ Judea and Samaria would truly threaten life in Israel and, if coordinated with attacks by outside forces, threaten Israel’s very survival.Based on the breakthrough wrought by Sadat in 1977, Katz imagines how a public visit to Jerusalem by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (or by the leader of Bahrain or the United Arab Emirates, or by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi or Jordan’s King Abdullah) might have a similar salutary effect on Israeli public opinion. Glaringly absent from his argument is an imagined visit along these lines by Palestinian leaders.The real need is for a deep change on the part of the Palestinians, not on the part of the Saudis, Bahrainis or others. Without such a change, the huge risks for Israel that would be associated with a Palestinian state in much of the West Bank/Judea and Samaria will remain.Sadly, there is little evidence that the Palestinians are yet open to such a change.LEWIS ROSEN JerusalemWhy that ad? I read with literary pleasure the articulate content of the full-page advertisement placed in your November 24 edition by Klaus Moshe Pülz.I concluded that it was not appropriate for an Israeli, Jewish and prominent international newspaper like The Jerusalem Post, and therefore wondered why it had been accepted for publication. Further, it took space away from news, comment and other content.Could we please be enlightened?MICHAEL BRUNERTModi’inIsrael’s humanityI am proud that here in Israel, attention is being concentrated on nursing care and housing for the elderly and disabled (“Ministries announce NIS 1 billion geriatric nursing reform,” November 22). This focus on moral behavior is manifested also in Israeli medical care for wounded Syrians.To be Jewish should mean to be more moral, and Israel is morally Jewish. Maybe the UN could find a way to cite Israel’s humanity.THELMA SUSSWEINJerusalemChange needed in schools When I was a kid growing up in London, I went to every weekday home match of my team Arsenal and the national team at Wembley. Matches started at 7:30 p.m. and finished by 9:10, and I would be in bed by 10 to get a good night’s sleep for school the next day, starting with assembly/prayers at 9 a.m.Recently, I saw an Israeli match, Netanya vs Haifa, that started at 8:30 p.m. and ended at 10:25. There were children from Haifa who for sure didn’t get to bed until midnight and had to be in school the next day for an 8 a.m. start. Why is this allowed to happen? Why is there no consideration for the children?In the 40 years I’ve lived here, very little has improved for Israeli schoolchildren. Their hours are from 8 a.m. till 1 or maybe 2 p.m. They return to empty homes because their parents are at work. They go to school six days a week, so they have no proper weekend. (Therefore, their parents suffer, too.)Teachers, of course, work five days a week – and go on strike it seems every single year. (I recently heard a senior teacher complain that even on his “low salary,” he was still “entitled” to go overseas with his family during the holidays!) Then there’s the non-existence of school lunches. Why does a people so obsessed with food treat its children so badly?Instead of governments wasting billions on rubbish, how about a complete overall of the education system and taking care of our children and youth properly? Rant over.DANIEL RATNER RehovotNew notes and Haredim With regard to “Women of note” (November 23), I just came back from an ATM, where I got the new NIS 100 notes. I noticed that there is a picture of a woman on them.Is this fair to Haredim, who either will be forced to have a picture of a woman or have to forgo the use of the currency?Perhaps there should be an option to get some of the older notes from ATMs. But what happens if a man is offered one of the new bills as change?LARRY ISRAEL RehovotCORRECTION: The “hijacking of the Air France plane by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine” mentioned in “The ‘ears of the country,’ Mickey Gurdus, dies at 73” (November 29) was the hijacking immortalized by the rescue at Entebbe. The hijacking took place in 1976 and not as stated.
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