Letters to the Editor / ZOA is fighting anti-Israel and anti-Jewish racism

Ha’aretz

Fighting anti-Israel and anti-Jewish racism

In response to “For boycotts that hurt Israel, nobody beats the Zionist Organization of America,” July 7 online

Bradley Burston’s piece criticized the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) for our campaigns against the Israel-bashing Boycott, Divestment,and Sanctions (BDS) promoting groups like Americans for Peace Now, Partners For a Progressive Israel, New Israel Fund (NIF), Open Hillel, J Street, and others. But Burston wrongly claims ZOA opposes these groups because they are “liberal, Democratic-voting, two-state advocating” liberals. In addition, he never mentions that ZOA opposes their marching in Israel Day Parades or participating in the World Zionist Congress elections solely because they support BDS against the businesses and 700,000 Jews who live and work in eastern Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. We never mentioned their positions on Palestinian statehood or Jewish communities past the 1967 Green Line. J Street also honors, features and brings leaders of the full BDS movement to college campuses and its conventions. It also has a website video touting BDS. An Ameinu subsidiary also calls for international sanctions against certain Israeli officials, while NIF finances groups that built the BDS infrastructure. Open Hillel not only hosts pro-BDS speakers from Students for Justice in Palestine, but also hosts speakers who call for Israel’s destruction.

Burston also chastises ZOA for complaining about Lufthansa’s discriminatory policy of allowing only one free bag on flights to Israel, while allowing two free bags on flights to every Arab/Islamic country in the Middle East. ZOA initially wrote to and called Lufthansa, but they simply falsely responded, “We don’t discriminate against Israel,” without explaining this policy which did. Only then did we publicize this troubling disparity, which provoked a large response to our offices thanking us for alerting them. At ZOA, we believe in fighting even small anti-Israel or anti-Jewish actions before they become even worse.

Mr. Burston – ZOA fights against anti-Israel and anti-Jewish racism – shouldn’t you?
Morton A. Klein
President, Zionist Organization of America
New York

Worse than Obama

In response to “U.S. State Department: We won’t protect Israeli settlements against boycott,” July 1, and “Clinton ‘alarmed’ over calls for Israel boycott, urges bipartisan action”

Let’s have no illusions or tall tales – Hillary Clinton won’t take any action against the BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) movement. It is no coincidence she writes that she is “alarmed” by the Israel boycott, instead of saying explicitly she will enforce – in contrast to President Barack Obama – the new trade law against anyone who dares to boycott Israel.

Tell me who your friends are, and I’ll tell you who you are: all Jewish-American leftists, with the anti-Israeli George Soros at their head, are Clinton’s friends and contribute to her election campaign. She will be much worse than Obama.
Amit Karni
Arad

Time for pollsters to call it quits

In response to “Greece votes in referendum, financial future in doubt,” July 5

On the night of March 17-18, all pollsters, forecasters, analysts and pundits were proven to have made a critical mistake regarding the results of the Knesset election. Less than two months later, all the experts in Britain prophesied a neck-and-neck race between the Conservatives and Labour in the general election – and the Conservative landslide surprised everybody. This week, the “convoy” continued. All the analysts forecast a tight struggle in the Greek referendum, which would end in a razor-thin victory one way or the other regarding the EU bailout plan – and again the result surprised them.

All the analysts and pollsters would do better to join together and complete their sociology and statistics studies at a prestigious university. Meanwhile, give us a break and cut out huge expenses for the parties and media outlets.
Meir Ben Yitzhak
Ramat Hasharon

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