Support refugees
The Bush administration hosts a Middle East summit in mid-November. Invited guests are the prime minister of Israel and the president of the Palestinian National Authority. Three main issues will be on the table — refugees, Jerusalem, and borders.
We are concerned that the “forgotten refugees” of the Middle East conflict, the almost 1 million Jews forced or compelled to flee from nine Arab countries, will again be forgotten. That is why we are urging Rep. Tom Lantos, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, to send House Resolution 185 to the full House.
This bill states in part that “any resolutions relating to the issue of Middle East refugees, and which include a reference to the required resolution of the Palestinian refugee issue, must also include a similarly explicit reference to the resolution of the issue of Jewish refugees” from Arab countries.
No just, comprehensive Middle East peace can be reached without recognition of, and redress for, the uprooting of centuries-old Jewish communities in the Middle East and North Africa by Arab governments hostile to the state of Israel.
Call Lantos today at (202) 225-5021 and urge him to send HR 185 to the full House now.
Emily Blanck | San Francisco
director, JIMENA
(Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa)
Bring back jokes
I have for years been taking j. The first thing I looked at was the jokes column.
Living in a senior community center where we have Jewish and non-Jewish residents, every Friday we have a program where I read the jokes printed in j.
Many of the residents are very ill and look forward to the reading. The last three issues in which the jokes appeared were particularly amusing.
Jewish people are noted for their sense of humor. Please, please, bring back the jokes column.
Sarah Wolfe | Palo Alto
Buy ‘blue-and-white’
Over the Labor Day weekend in San Francisco I was driving by Rainbow Grocery and was shocked and offended to see several people gathered outside around an “information table” carrying large neon green signs reading, “Boycott Israeli Goods.”
I went inside and asked store staff where I could find Israeli goods. After a lot of looking, I found bags of “Israeli Couscous” made by the Osem company. I bought all 17 bags on the shelf.
On my way out, I told Customer Service that my only regret was that they did not have more Israeli products for me to buy.
The literature dispensed by the pro-boycotters states: “Although Rainbow carries few Israeli products, a boycott by a worker-owned organization as significant as Rainbow grocery could inspire similar community organizations to follow suit.”
I urge all readers of j. to “inspire” Rainbow to carry more Israeli products. Next time you see the pro-boycotters, go into Rainbow and ask what Israeli products you can buy. Let’s buy blue-and-white at Rainbow.
Michele Skootsky | San Francisco
Help for survivors
Congress has the opportunity to enact legislation desperately needed by Holocaust survivors 60 years after the end of WWII.
HR 1746 will require global insurance companies to honor policies they marketed to Jews prior to WWII but failed to pay after the Holocaust. Over 800,000 such policies worth $17 billion remain unpaid.
Tens of thousands of Holocaust survivors in the United States cannot afford adequate food, medicine, home care or other basic needs. According to the Jewish Family and Children’s Service of San Francisco in 2004, nearly half the Bay Area’s 5,000 survivors are indigent or living on the edge of poverty, struggling to survive on fixed incomes.
All families should be able to recover the funds held by the insurers, and the imperative to enable indigent survivors to receive what they are owed should weigh on all our consciences.
The one person who has the power to help these deserving Holocaust survivors is Rep. Tom Lantos, the only survivor ever elected to Congress. We hope he will lead the effort in Congress to pass the pending legislation. Time is very much against the survivors, and it is now time for Congress to act.
Lani Silver | San Francisco
David Schaecter and Samuel J. Dubbin | Miami
president and counsel, Holocaust Survivors Foundation USA
CopyrightJ, the Jewish news weekly of Northern California