Features
Letters to the Editor
NATIONS AT WAR
Editors, Daily Planet:
The Planet’s editorial cartoon (“The State of Palestine,” Daily Planet, April 16-19) accuses Israel and the U.S. of killing Palestine.
So, if a Palestinian State is established, everyone in the Mideast will live happily ever after? No more jihad? No more bus bombs?
So, if Saddam Hussein is deposed, everyone in Iraq will live happily ever after? No more violence? Democracy will flourish?
It’s hard for the US to show much outrage at Israel for assassinating two Hamas leaders in a row. We may soon have to kill a certain Shiite leader.
In self-defense, of course. We and Israel are both fighting a war.
Steve Geller
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DISSERVICE
Editors, Daily Planet:
The April 16 editorial cartoon by Justin DeFreitas showing the moribund state of Palestine impaled by an American Flag, with the Star of David as a replacement for the 50 stars of the United States, was inflammatory and terribly misrepresenting of reality. It does a disservice to your readers and worsens the chance for peace and justice.
Consider these quotes from world-wide sources:
1. “Arafat says that the Bush-Sharon deal marks the end of the peace process, but I believe it signals the beginning of his end,” commented a veteran PLO official in Ramallah. “The Palestinians are not stupid and most of them know that we have reached this situation largely because of Arafat’s failure to read the political map correctly.”
2. “Yesterday George W. Bush outlined a path for peace between Israel and the Palestinians that has the distinct advantage of being based in reality. A Palestinian state will only come into existence when Palestinians themselves have grasped that the Jewish state is here to stay and that a peace deal will have to take account of Israel’s needs and interests as well as theirs.
“President Bush opened a new era of possibility for peace by stipulating some of the tough stuff at the beginning. His realism—together with the daring vision of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who intends to lead unilateral pullbacks from Palestinian lands in Gaza and on the West Bank—is a wake-up call to Palestinians that their only possible future is one in which they are not placing all their hopes on the negotiated destruction of Israel (“Mideast breakthrough,” by John Podhorez, New York Post, April 15, 2004).
Israel and the United States did not kill the idea of a Palestinian State. The Palestinians did it to themselves. When they can demonstrate responsibility for controlling their destiny, and eliminate indoctrinating their children with hatred, and halt terrorism against their neighbors, and demonstrate that they want to live peacefully with a secure state of Israel - then their long awaited state may start to become a reality.
Shame on the Daily Planet for not providing a broader understanding to their readers.
Arthur Braufman
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EX PARTE RULE
Editors, Daily Planet:
The ex parte rule has not served our community well.
Unlike almost every other community in the country Berkeley forbids communication between elected officials and it citizens concerning building projects once a permit application has been filed. This means that our City Council is out of the picture unless the project comes to them on appeal. By this time much time and money has been spent and people’s positions have hardened. The results is often a no-win situation for all involved. We need to find a better way.
Eliminating the ex-parte rule would allow councilmembers to, if they wish, play an active role in bringing our community together to find solutions which we can all live with. They could provide us with the leadership that is expected of elected officials in every other community in the nation except Berkeley. Building housing is not incompatible with preservation or quality of life, it all depends on how it is done. Ensuring that it is done right is the job of our elected officials.
Berkeley deserves better than the projects it is currently getting and I believe that eliminating the ex parte rule will lead to much better projects. When people work together early on in the process, good things can happen. Thank you Mayor Bates for your leadership on this issue.
Tim Hansen
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PUBLIC ART
Editors, Daily Planet:
If our City Council decides to buy more public art for Center Street or elsewhere, I would like the selection(s) to be voted on by the public. I don’t see the point in spending a lot of our money for “art” that we don’t like.
An important requirement for public art is that it be noticeable. The two “sculptures” downtown are so un-artistic that I don’t notice them: a tall, straight piece of steel and a rock.
Proposed sculptures can be submitted as small models, then displayed so that the public can look at them and vote, like we voted for the new public safety building. There should be a lot to choose from, at least 100.
But we can’t really afford to buy art at this economically stressed time anyway.
Myrna Sokolinsky
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POLITICAL CLIMATE
Editors, Daily Planet:
I arrived in Berkeley in 1946 to enroll in UC Berkeley. As a liberal/left Democrat, I fell in love with the political climate here. I lived in student COOP housing, became active in the Berkeley Consumer COOP (becoming chairman of the North Shattuck COOP) , campaigned for Henry Wallace for president, etc.
I embrace employee owned businesses like the Cheeseboard, Juice Bar, et al. But today I see a very different political climate here. To be politically correct one must embrace and support the Palestinians and other Moslem nations that give little or no rights to women, that do not offer religious freedom or diversity, and that feel threaten by democracy.
I see “Free Palestine” signs all over Berkeley. That is the last thing that Arafat wants. He came as a poor carpet-bagger from Egypt to visit his uncle the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, a supporter of the Nazis who spent WWII with Hitler in Berlin. He became a willing student of the Russian KGB and the Romanian equivalent. Today he is one of the richest men in the Middle East using his skills as a super-terrorist and taking funds from Arab nations, the USA and Europe to help his cronies and to keep the Palestinians impoverished and in refugee camps.
What the Arab nations could not achieve by military might, i.e.: defeat the Israeli military, they are achieving by duplicity, deception and terrorism. The millions of dollars that Arafat has in Swiss banks and that funds his wife’s Paris life style, could fund a healthy and prosperous existence for the Palestinians.
How easily and swiftly this new generation has abandoned leftist values and supposedly support the underdog. How foolish to cast 250 million Arabs with their boundless wealth as the underdogs against five million Jews in their postage-stamp state.
Aubrey Lee Broudy
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SEISMIC FEE WAIVER
Editors, Daily Planet:
The members of the Berkeley Disaster Council think that the Berkeley community should be aware that the City Council is considering ending the seismic fee waiver program in order to capture approximately $300,000 per year for the city. While this is clearly tempting in the face of a $10 million shortfall, the Disaster Council hopes the City Council will resist this impulse.
This waiver of city permit fees is the only incentive we offer to most current residents to improve the seismic safety of their homes. (The much larger transfer tax partial waiver is only available when property changes hands.) The $300,000 represents thousands of houses made safer each year. Each additional house that survives the next major earthquake intact represents a tremendous saving to the city and the community.
The other fees that the city is studying for increases work very differently—for example, a higher traffic ticket or parking fine is only a one-time (and avoidable) annoyance to a driver. The seismic fee waiver is the sole fee change under consideration that is designed to encourage and help capture the benefits of significant private investment in the city. To end this program would be shortsighted.
Margit Roos-Collins
Chair, Disaster Council
