Public Comment

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I want to thank you for printing Annette Herskovits’ opinion piece, “Who Remembers the Holocaust?” Her piece reminds us that the slogan “Never Again” should be intended to mean for all peoples. 

The Israeli military attack on Gaza and the resulting suffering of Palestinian civilians has moved people all over the world, including many Jews, to action. I believe that the attack against Gaza, in conjunction with ongoing settlement activity in the West Bank, has exposed the Israeli government’s insincerity in regards to a lasting peace process. 

This past week, more than 900 Jewish people participated in a 24-hour demonstration in front of the World Zionist Organization and Jewish Agency’s offices in New York City to say “Not in Our Name.” The message was directed to the Israeli government and those American Jewish institutions who represent themselves as “the Jewish Community.” However, they do not represent many of us. As one of many Jews in the United States who have been working for a long time against Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands taken in 1967 and ongoing U.S. support for the occupation, I’m glad that there is finally a place for our voices to be heard in the general discourse.  

Cindy Shamban 

Member, Jewish Voice for Peace 

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Editors, Daily Planet: 

I just wanted to thank you so much for publishing Annette Herskovits’ powerful commentary. There are many of us Jews who are so angry, so appalled, and so sad about the unconscionable and unforgivable actions of the Israeli government towards the Palestinians. No matter what one’s political beliefs are about how the conflict in the Middle East should be dealt with, “never again” applies to the treatment of all human beings. 

Karen Platt 

Albany 

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Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thank you very much for publishing Annette Herskovits’ article on Israel-Palestine. She has given us her own history and the history of the founding of Israel and its impact on the people of Palestine with careful and compassionate detail. 

Her own experience of living in hiding and under bombings as a child has given her an empathy which she has generously shared with us. And she is very even-handed with the sharing of the blame for the situation. Two thousand years of anti-Semitism and hundreds of years of European colonialism have combined to shape the disaster we see today. 

Thank you, Annette, for opening that window and thank you Berkeley Daily Planet for giving Annette space on your pages. 

Carolyn Scarr 

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Editors, Daily Planet: 

Ms. Annette Herskovits questions “Who Remembers The Holocaust?” I do. I was arrested on Nov. 9, 1934, on Kristallnacht, in Munich, Germany, and sent to Dachau concentration camp. I managed to survive but most of my family perished because they were Jews. They had committed no crime, but were murdered.  

Ms. Herskovits compares this event to the fate of the Gazan people but there is no comparison. Israel does not, and did not, occupy Gaza. Israel withdrew in 2005. Gaza was occupied by Egypt between 1949 and 1967. Israel defended Jewish people who lived in Gaza who were under constant threat of annihilation and were making a living by growing flowers and vegetables. World pressure forced Israel to remove Jewish farmers leaving Gaza Judenrein even though 1.2 million Arab Palestinians are full citizens in Israel.  

In response to Israel’s pullout Hamas attacked Israeli cities with over 6000 missile attacks against Jewish civilian targets. Israel’s right to defend its citizens against terrorist attacks is being compared to the Holocaust by Ms. Herskovits. All Israel requested was to bring an end to the attacks. When this diplomatic policy failed Israel defended itself militarily. Hamas fighters mixed into the middle of civilian centers, hence the civilian casualties. 

Susanne (Sanne) DeWitt 

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Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thank you for printing the courageous and moving commentary, “Who Remembers the Holocaust?” by Annette Herskovits about the plight of the Palestinians and the tragedy in Gaza. Her questioning of Israel’s action in Gaza is particularly moving given her family history and personal experience of the holocaust. More viewpoints like hers need to be heard in this country so that our Middle East policies can evolve, be more informed, and thus serve both Israel and the Palestinians to end this horrible conflict. Unfortunately, it is more common to find alternative perspectives like those expressed by Ms Herskovits’ that question Israel’s policies in Israel than in the U.S. 

Edwin Herzog 

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Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thank you for publishing Ms. Annette Herskovits’ Feb. 11 commentary.  

It is healing to hear the voice of a Jewish woman, the daughter of Holocaust victims, telling the truth about Israel’s attack on Gaza.  

I expect the Jewish people, who suffered a lot, to stand up against oppression and racism. But when it comes to the Palestinians, dehumanization and violence are legitimized and most human rights conventions are suspended. 

When the world closed its doors in the face of the Jews who fled European anti-Semitism in the last century, they found refuge in Palestine. 

Instead of living side by side with the Palestinians, the Zionists chose to drive out the Palestinians from their homes, destroy their villages and take their lands. 

I hope that more conscientious Jews will speak the truth and not be scared to criticize Israel. Israel needs protection from its own racist and self-destructive actions. 

Nabil Wahbeh 

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Editors, Daily Planet: 

I can agree that there are the horrors of the Gaza intensive by Israel, but I can’t agree with the biased information given by Annette Herskovits. The Israeli side of the story was not properly given. There are individual incidents on both sides which would take reams of paper to document. We need to see the “whole picture.” 

I read this line: “Hamas scrupulously observed a ceasefire from last June until Nov. 4, when Israel broke it, purportedly to destroy a tunnel dug by Palestinian militants to kidnap Israeli soldiers—difficult to believe in light of a report by Israeli newspaper Haaretz’ that Israel had prepared the attacks for months.” 

I thought this was incorrect because of what I read in Facts and Logic about the Middle East (FLAME), an e-mail that I receive. Please inform your readers that they can access FLAME to read other information for themselves at www.factsandlogic.org. 

Suzanne Cerny 

Walnut Creek 

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Editors, Daily Planet: 

Annette Herskovits is to be commended for her commentary, “Who Remembers the Holocaust?,” for both its historical perspective and its compassion. 

It is also a very moving piece of writing and the Planet should be proud to have published it. 

Suzanne Rogalin  

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Editors, Daily Planet: 

We found Annette Herskovits’ Feb. 12 commentary on the Gaza conflict inspiring. When is one side or the other going to have a heart as big as hers? Israel, as the stronger party, should be the first to try. 

Ann and William Smock 

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Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thank you for publishing Annette Herskovits’ article. I really appreciate her point of view and her courage in expressing it. 

Beau Takahara 

San Francisco 

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Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thank you for the excellent Feb. 11th article by Holocaust survivor Annette Herskovits, who writes so eloquently of her experiences as a Jewish child hiding in Paris after the Nazi invasion and compares that to what children are experiencing in Gaza now. Annette is a true voice of conscience who speaks from a point of actual experience (her parents died in Auschwitz) and moral authority that few can equal. 

I know you will be sent a lot of hate mail by the usual fanatics because you’ve printed this piece, but you are doing the right thing. 

I hope the Berkeley Daily Planet prints more articles by Annette Herskovits. Her wise and compassionate voice is much needed in these dire times. 

Francesca Rosa 

San Francisco 

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Editors, Daily Planet: 

Obviously your Annette Herskovits does not know the true facts as to what is happening there. She needs to be aware that it has been the Palestinians that have sent rockets into Israel on a daily basis for the past eight years. I am totally shocked you would even report anything even remotely so ill informed. This will go to every Jewish institution, synagogue and individual I know. Shame on the Berkeley Daily Planet. 

Micah David Ehrich 

Tarzana, Calif. 

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Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thank you for the excellent op-ed by Annette Herskovits in the Feb. 11 Berkeley Daily Planet comparing the assault on Gaza with her own experiences as a child hiding out from the Nazis. She not only lays out clearly the current situation but is able to emotionally connect the suffering of children in Gaza with the suffering of Jewish children during World War II. 

Having worked in the West Bank for two summers with Christian Peacemaker Teams in a violence reduction program and having continued to read the on-the-ground reports from that group, I am painfully aware of the determined and constant illegal efforts of the Israeli government and the Jewish settlers to drive more and more Palestinians from their homes. While I can sympathize with the feeling of many Jewish people that the only way they can be assured of not enduring another holocaust is by having a Jewish-only state, I also am thoroughly convinced that the way Zionists have carried out that desire in the past 61 years is not only contrary to international law, immoral, and highly destructive of the Palestinian people, but also is ultimately destructive of Jewish lives and dreams and imperils the possibility of the continued existence of Jews in the Middle East.  

Esther Mohler Ho 

Hayward 

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Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am grateful to Ms. Herskovits for her courageous letter and to the Planet for publishing it. Although there is much unbiased, scholarly information available on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we do not seek it out. Even when we are uneasy about the massive destruction of Palestinian homes and life, I think we are afraid to raise the issue. We are afraid of being labelled terrorist sympathizers or anti-Semitic. 

It is easier to mention the rockets and turn aside than to find out how much U.S.-supplied weaponry is raining down on the Palestinians. 

But I hope that most of us want peace and justice for both Israelis and Palestinians. I think that is the purpose of Ms. Herskovits’ letter. 

Mel Paul 

Fresno 

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Editors, Daily Planet: 

Anna Hershkovits’ moving testimony should be required reading for everyone. As one who has known suffering and who lost her family to the Nazi death camps she has more than earned the right to speak out when her people (and mine as well) translate “Never Again” into the subjugation of a people whose land they coveted even before the Holocaust. 

When the state of Israel came into being as a result of European anti-Semitism, the Palestinians also paid the price for that anti-Semitism. At least 750 thousand Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes by the Haganah, the Jewish army of the day. Those who remained lived under brutal military rule until 1966 and many also lost their homes in areas where Jewish Israelis wanted to live free of Arabs. The United Nations ruled that those refugees who wanted to live in peace should be allowed to return but the Jewish state said “No.” After all, if there were a significant number of Muslims and Christians in the country how could it be a Jewish state? They had to go and that was one of the great tragedies of the post World War II era. 

Today the Palestinians who have been driven into ever-smaller enclaves are still paying the price. Israel has commandeered much of the land and the water resources of the illegally occupied West Bank while bulldozing Palestinian homes and destroying tens of thousands of Palestinian olive and fruit trees. At the same time Israel is expanding Jewish-only settlements and Jewish-only roads. Meanwhile Israel has locked a million and a half Palestinians into the world’s largest outdoor prison, Gaza where they expected the imprisoned people not to resist. And just as oppressed people have resisted their oppressors since time immemorial so do their Palestinians resist. Israel has taken away their hopes and they have nothing else to lose. 

It is past time for Israel to end the occupation, withdraw to the 1967 line and, at the very least, compensate those who were forced to leave their homes in the Nakba of 1948. It is also high time for the United States to stop funding Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians. Otherwise, “Never Again,” a slogan that should apply to all peoples is nothing but meaningless jargon. 

Jan Bauman 

Mill Valley 

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Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thank you for Annette Herskovits excellent article, “Who Remembers the Holocaust?” I was moved by Ms. Herskovits’ description of her own childhood experience of the Holocaust and how she related her terror to the terror Gazan children are experiencing. Her insightful summary of events leading up to the desperate plight of the Palestinians was enlightening. 

I applaud you for letting the public hear Ms. Herskovits’ story. 

Edith Cacciatore 

Novato 

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Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thank you for publishing Annette Herskovits’ moving essay. Germany took responsibility for the Holocaust, officially apologized to the Jews, paid reparations and took measures within its own country to ensure the remembrance of the Holocaust and the main lesson we must learn from it: that we must protect the human rights of all people. As a consequence, Israel and Germany have a good relationship today, and Germany became a valued member of the international community. Someday I hope the Jews can do the same with respect to the Palestinians. 

Esther Riley 

Fairfax 

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Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thanks for publishing Annette Herskovits’ “Who Remembers The Holocaust”? As a fellow Jew, I applaud her forthright statement of the crimes that are being committed in our names by Israel (with the help of our tax dollars). Shame on all Jews who refuse to protest the butchery against the Palestinians which makes a mockery of our 3000 year-old moral heritage.  

Chuck Sher 

Petaluma 

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Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thank you to Annette Herskovits for so generously sharing her thoughts with us, and her childhood memories, which must have been a very painful thing to do. 

It is one of the best I have read on the subject, and I have read many. 

Jane Jewell 

San Rafael 

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Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thank you for Annette Herskovits’ lucid, penetrating analysis of the Israel- Palestine situation. In the name of compassion and human dignity we must challenge U.S. support of Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians. 

Eric Doyle, Nora Reza 

Menlo Park 

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Editors, Daily Planet: 

Ms. Herskovits has spent years studying the plight of the Palestinians. She writes with the combined strength of learning, and personal experience of the holocaust. 

No wonder that readers who do no more than repeat the propaganda of the Israeli government are furious. 

Emily Dalgarno 

Watertown, Mass. 

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Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thanks for Annette Herskovits’ comments (Feb. 11) on Israel’s brutal blitzkrieg against the already-starved and largely defenseless 1.5 million Gazans, half of them children, trapped by Israel and Egypt’s Mubarak in, effectively, an open-air prison. 

Historical knowledge helps us understand Palestinians’ struggle in Gaza. In 1948, Jewish terrorists, among them Israel’s “founding fathers,” bombed the King David Hotel, booby-trapped British soldiers they’d hanged and drove 700,000 indigenous Palestinians from Palestine and 200,000 into Gaza, crowding the 80,000 indigenous Gazans already there.  

After Israel’s 1967 Six-Day War, things worsened. Israel’s army, illegally restricting Palestinians’ movements, began systematically destroying their civilian infrastructure, even shooting farmers and fishermen earning their livings. Eighty percent of Gazans suffer enforced poverty, most in refugee camps served by UN Relief and Works Agency.  

Since 1967, Israel, ignoring scores of UN resolutions demanding respect for Palestinians’ rights, began illegally colonizing the Occupied Palestinian Territories, jailing and torturing thousands.  

With curfews, checkpoints, roadblocks, colored pass cards, Jews-only highways, military and civil codes channeling Palestinian land, water, resources into Jewish immigrant hands and a “separation” wall longer than the Berlin Wall, Israel’s made daily life for Palestinians a hell worse than blacks in South Africa suffered under apartheid, according to South African visitors. 

After collectively punishing Gaza for democratically electing in 2006 a Muslim-based government, Israel has subjected Palestinian civilians to routine strip searches even deaths at checkpoints, sniper bullets, attack helicopter and F16 jetfighter guided missiles, tanks, heavy artillery, warships, killing and wounding thousands. With armored Caterpillar, Volvo, Daewoo bulldozers, Israel destroys millions of fruit trees, tens of thousands of Palestinian homes. 

Israeli leaders want Palestinians to disappear.  

In 2008 Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai, declared Palestinians firing Qassam rockets would bring on themselves a “shoah [Hebrew for ‘holocaust’] because we will use all our might to defend ourselves.” 

But “defense” is a flimsy pretext. Qassams, fired eight years at Israel, have killed a total of twenty-three Israelis—a stark contrast to Israel’s three-week slaughter of 1,400 Palestinians, injuring 5,300 more. Who are the “terrorists” here? 

For this reason, as the international community did to end apartheid in South Africa, thousands of citizens of good will around the world are organizing a Boycott, Divest and Sanction movement against Israel and Israeli businesses. Many of its leaders are Jews worried Israeli militarism is making Israel less, not more, secure, and want secular democracy there, not Jewish theocracy. 

Rittmer Steven Greaves 

San Rafael