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FAULTY COMPARISON

Faulty Comparison

To the Editor:

We were shocked at Sister Carol Lang's characterization (Nov. 30 issue) of the letter that we penned, which she said was filled with so many racist remarks and misinformation that she could not cite one of them, but instead, assassinated the entire text. It is well apparent that she missed the primary points of the response in that unionists, particularly those belonging to District Council 37, are not in a position to conduct debates or open discussions on the Mid-East and Israeli-Palestinian topics which should be left to the experts.

We, as unionists, have enough on our hands negotiating a good contract for our members, battling the city's administration to curtail the contracting-out and wasting of tens of millions of taxpayers' dollars on private consultants and fighting for more civil service tests and the banishment of the 1-in-3 hiring practice which city management uses as a tool to thwart the hiring of those on the certified civil service lists.

What is as appalling as Mr. Gimbel's comparison of the treatment of the Palestinians by the Israelis to the Nazis' of the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto is Ms. Lang's similar distortion of what she claims is gross mistreatment of the Palestinians by the Israelis. She points out that the Israelis are "starving people out of the necessities of life," which is totally wrong in fact and is misleading.

What she does not state is the reason why some of the electrical power and truck shipments have been reduced going into the Palestinian areas. Under Hamas rule, Palestinian factions, housed in and near residential areas, are sending mortar shells into Israeli civilian sections. What are the Israelis to do? Instead of carpet-bombing the residential areas where dozens would be killed, the Israelis are doing a peaceful retaliatory act where they are reducing the shipment of certain items, but are allowing the life-sustaining necessities such as medicines and certain foodstuffs like baby food to continue to go through.

Until the terrorist Hamas-led Palestinian government does something to stop these mortar attacks, does Ms. Lang expect the Israelis to do nothing? To carpet-bomb a residential area? To invade the territory? Where is her concern and outcry for the safety of the civilian Israelis and for the Palestinian to stop the mortar attacks?

We could only imagine what the Gimbels and Langs of the world would say if they were on the receiving end of a mortar or suicide bomber attack or a roadside IED. The Israelis are showing compassion and restraint. They are allowing basic medical, food and electrical power to flow to the Palestinians until the mortar attacks stop. One can only imagine what the U.S. would do to protect its citizens if some faction in Mexico or Canada started mortar attacks on the U.S.

Another point of contention that Ms. Lang, like Mr. Gimbel, dwelled on, is the reference to the Warsaw Ghetto. It seems that a dreadful and sad part of the Holocaust is continually being used and abused by providing fodder in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We would like to remind Ms. Lang that before World War II, the Warsaw Ghetto housed about 140,000 people. The Nazis, during the Holocaust, built a ten-foot wall around the 3-1/2-square mile area and deported about 440,000 Jews into the ghetto who were then systematically sent to the government-sponsored, industrialized gas chambers of the many death camps. Food in the ghetto was limited to less than 300 calories per person per day ... starvation rations!

The Palestinians on the other hand, to a degree, have farms and livestock to grow their own food and to feed upon. They even export some of their crops. Some comparison.

If the Israelis are truly starving the Palestinians, why is there no world outcry? Why no world assistance similar to the Berlin Airlift of the early 1960s?

Furthermore, Ms. Lang is all wrong in her tersely-worded letter concerning the issue that our group's Gimbel response is racist and historically wrong. The facts are accurate but since the space is limited, one cannot inform the world in a letter explaining the components of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. What Ms. Lang and others have forgotten is that Israel, after capturing land from its five-time aggressors, has given back most of it so that the Palestinians could form their own state and live in peace. However, instead of electing a democratic faction, they elected a known terrorist group to lead them, whose only goal is to drive the Israelis into the sea.

In order to have any peace between two peoples, both parties must want it. The Langs and Gimbels of the world need to wake up and smell the roses.

STEPHAN BENEDICT, MITCHELL FEDER, MAURICE SPREIREGEN, MARVIN GREISMAN, HILDA SCHNEIDER

Editor's note: The authors are past or present officials of Civil Service Technical Guild Local 375, District Council 37.