Lost in translation
I’d like to clarify what Myanmar Ambassador to Israel Maung Maung Lynn said in the interview with Army Radio (“Myanmar envoy draws ire by saying Israel signed new military contract with his country,” December 1). It was a telephone interview and the ambassador’s answers in English were “lost in translation” to Hebrew.
He responded to the question of whether Israel was selling arms to Myanmar by saying: “During my time, there isn’t a new, another contract.”
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But the presenters stated that the ambassador spoke in the affirmative about current arms sales.
They mistakenly picked up “is” instead of “isn’t.”
The Hebrew translation with the opposite meaning was repeatedly quoted. This was determined only after talking to a Foreign Ministry official and when the voice clips were available to review.
THET WIN
Tel Aviv
The writer is a minister/counselor at the Embassy of Myanmar.
The ‘threats’ she wrote of
I had to reread the last paragraph Rabbi Jill Jacobs’s “All Jews are responsible for one another” (Observations, December 1) to make sure I understood what she was urging of us Israeli Jews.
She wrote that “membership in Am Yisrael, the People of Israel, does demand that we stand with other Jews facing threats to their safety or freedom, regardless of citizenship.” She was referring to the threats facing the comfortable existence of her own community of liberal Jews aggravated by the Trump Administration.
But isn’t this exactly what Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely was talking about, albeit clumsily, when asking the liberal-minded American- Jewish community to stand with us and show more empathy and understanding of the political tensions underlying the policies of the Israeli government in its attempts to ward off existential threats while at the same time upholding democratic and Jewish values?
TONY FRANKLIN
Ra’anana
People do care
In “‘Natural gas can change our geopolitical status’” (November 27), your reporter quotes Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz as saying: “People sometimes don’t care about their brothers and sisters five or 10 or 20 kilometers away. Not in my backyard.” I was in total shock reading this statement.
I made aliya to Zichron Ya’acov nine years ago.
I don’t think this statement could be made of any Israelis under almost any circumstances, and it certainly cannot be said about my fellow Zichronites. This fight against the gas platform is being waged for all residents of the coast, from Netanya to Haifa, and all citizens of Israel who visit the beaches, hotels and national parks along the coast.
The people in Zichron are some of the most involved and helpful people I have met, and they have great educational and scientific backgrounds.
They have spent countless hours trying to find out the truth and argue for the safer solution of gas treatment out at sea.
I hope that in the end, preserving public health will prevail, even if it costs more. This is not hype. No one can deny that there are real health issues at stake for the Arabs in Fureidis, the Druse in Daliat al-Carmel, and the Jewish communities up and down the coast.
All of our communities have been fighting together for many months. Minister Steinitz should know better than to try to pit us against each other.
JULIE BLOCH MENDELSOHN
Zichron Ya’acov
The writer has a masters degree in public health from Johns Hopkins University and was an environmental lawyer at the US Environmental Protection Agency.
For homeless millionaires
With regard to “Aging with dignity – a multi-sector plan” by Greer Fay Cashman (November 29), the accompanying photograph shows Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visiting the Siegfried Moses Senior Residence in Jerusalem.
I assume that his visit was to check out the facilities, which he, unlike the majority of pensioners, can certainly afford.
As a benchmark against which to measure the average standard of living and comfort of retirees, Beit Moses is extremely atypical. The monthly fees that it and other privately run retirement homes charge is way more than most people receive in a month in their so-called golden years, apart from the whacking cost of buying a place.
If the prime minister and government really want to help pensioners live out their days with some measure of dignity and comfort, they should be more concerned with assisting the schemes that are in place to help retirees live in their own homes with a support network. For those unable to do so, a government-run chain of no-frills retirement homes needs to be in place.
Many of the additional and expensive perks of the privately run retirement homes are unnecessary and unneeded. What is needed are safe, warm facilities in accessible locations where residents can form their own social groups but have the necessary assistance in place in case of need.
Maybe philanthropists could be persuaded to finance the building of such homes instead of erecting more and more blocks of what a late friend once described as homes for homeless millionaires.
TAMAR JOSEPH
Jerusalem
Begin’s precedent...
Sorry to turn Yaakov Katz’s statements about Anwar Sadat (“How to win over Israelis,” Editor’s Notes, November 24) on their head.
Sadat did us a favor by coming to Israel and giving a speech in the Knesset? After being defeated in the 1973 war, he acted as the victor; unfortunately, we and the whole world fell for that ploy. As a result of that visit and Sadat’s demands on Israel, prime minister Menachem Begin gave up the Sinai.
Begin set the precedent for the Jewish people having to bow down in homage to the Islamic hordes and give in to their demands.
HAROLD GEE
Jerusalem
...and the wayward child
In “What kind of state does Israel want to be?” (Editor’s Notes, November 17), Yaakov Katz opines that if Israel is the state for all Jews, it has a responsibility to make the vast majority of progressive Jews who do not and will not live in Israel “feel at home.” I don’t agree.
Israel, as a host, certainly has a responsibility to make its guests (the vast number of its faithful friends of all religions and nationalities) feel at home. Our relationship with the Jews of the Diaspora is of a different nature.
Many of us have first-hand acquaintance with an ordinary, non-religious Jewish family faced with an offspring who becomes religious. The parental reactions vary from extreme revulsion to a decision to set aside a kosher corner in the kitchen to accommodate the wayward child.
With regard to prayer at the Western Wall, we are faced with a photographic negative: The wayward child is coming back to his religious roots but is demanding what some would consider a treif (non-kosher) corner.
I suggest that leaders of Diaspora Jewry turn their attention to Jewish education, starting with the saga of Abraham and the history of the judges, kings and prophets, warts and all, to the beauty of the Psalms and the depths of the Megillot. Defray the cost of education so that people of ordinary means can benefit.
If this means a diversion of funds from Israel and tikkun olam (repairing the world), so be it. Just put a little blue box on the teacher’s table to allow the kids to participate in the redemption of the land.
SYDNEY L. KASTEN
Jerusalem