To the Editor:
Re “In Israel, ‘the Darkness Is Everywhere,’” by Megan K. Stack (Opinion guest essay, May 18):
I appreciate Ms. Stack’s essay, in which she makes several important observations about current attitudes among Israelis. However, she leaves out the tragic choices that Palestinians have themselves made in Gaza and the West Bank.
In particular, after the Israeli withdrawal in 2005, Gazans had the opportunity to use huge amounts of international aid to build new residential communities and seaside commercial and tourist destinations.
Instead, they diverted essentially all investment into war preparations, including the rocket and tunnel technology that has proved so formidable in several wars with Israel since then. The extremism of attitudes in this conflict isn’t limited to one side.
Stephen Hall
San Francisco
To the Editor:
I am grateful to The New York Times for publishing Megan K. Stack’s essay. We need more articles on what it is really like on the ground in Israel, and, as disheartening as it may be, we are all better and more informed for reading it.
Only when Jews in the United States (I am one of them) obtain a greater understanding of the horrible plight of the Palestinian people and what they have been subjected to over decades will we be able to affect our government’s policies to produce a more hopeful outcome for the region.
Until then, this vicious cycle will continue, because, as Ms. Stack so eloquently described, “there is no wall thick enough to suppress forever a people who have nothing to lose.”
Roy Friedland
Greensboro, N.C.
To the Editor:
I am dismayed at Megan K. Stack’s one-sided analysis of Israeli policy toward the Palestinians. I am a lifelong supporter of Israel, but I share Ms. Stack’s concern regarding Israel’s extreme right-wing government. Placing all, or even most, of the responsibility at the foot of Israeli Jews, however, is disingenuous.
Consider a counterfactual history in which Arab and Palestinian leaders had said “yes” to any of the opportunities to live next to Jewish neighbors in peace. A simple Arab “yes” might have resulted in two separate states, for two separate indigenous peoples, living side by side.
There might have been no rise of Hamas and Hezbollah, suicide bombings or defensive barriers. Both parties could have lived in peace, dignity and prosperity.
Perhaps the next time an olive branch is offered, if there is a next time, the Palestinians will reply “yes.” What do they have to lose?
Stephen E. Green
San Jose, Calif.
Trump, Oil and Big Money in Politics
To the Editor:
Re “Trump Solicits Billion Dollars at Oil Dinner” (front page, May 10):
It is a clarion call to get big money out of politics.
You report that Donald Trump “told a group of oil executives and lobbyists gathered at a dinner at his Mar-a-Lago resort last month that they should donate $1 billion to his presidential campaign because, if elected, he would roll back environmental rules that he said hampered their industry.”
Fossil fuel interests already pour tens of millions of dollars into political campaigns, mostly to Republicans, pushing that party’s congressional delegation and presidential nominee to oppose action against climate change.
This push for contributions and profits is in the face of the virtual unanimity of climate scientists that burning fossil fuels is the main cause of global warming.
Big contributions from gun, pharmaceutical, insurance, financial and other wealthy interests also powerfully influence our system in their favor, usually to the disadvantage of ordinary people. When one or a few big donors can buy more political speech than tens of millions of ordinary people combined, the system is rigged in favor of those who already have the most.
Public funding of election campaigns has worked well at the state, county and city levels. It elevates merit and the public interest in government decision-making and builds confidence in our system.
Richard Barsanti
Western Springs, Ill.
‘Journey’ as Metaphor
To the Editor:
Re “When Did Everything Turn Into a ‘Journey’?” (front page, May 16):
Name the journey — infertility, breast cancer, weight loss, motherhood or a cathartic vacation — and I’ve been on it.
“Journey” has become a euphemism for struggle, often a long, winding road with ups and downs. Some people may reach the finish line and celebrate triumphantly. Others may never get there, leaving loved ones to wonder how their “choose your own adventure” could have followed a different chapter. No journey is ever truly complete.
Infertility may be behind me, but its wake — a stillborn son, a ruptured uterus, a C-section scar, new family members in our surrogates who carried our daughters — will reverberate for my lifetime.
Many individuals will face infertility for the first time today, tomorrow or someday in the future. I always make time for those who reach out to me, hoping my experience can help them — or, at the very least, give them a chance to talk to someone on the metaphorical “other side.”
Journeys can break us or make us into someone new. Whatever euphemism we use, the important thing is don’t make it your ending when you get to the other side. Make it a new beginning to help those who follow in your footsteps.
Lia Buffa De Feo
New York
To the Editor:
With respect to cancer, its patients and their families — and all those dismayed by what linguists call “semantic drift” — let’s agree to call cancer a “situation.” Not a sentimental, self-help journey. Not a grim or rousing battle. Definitely something fraught and serious: a situation that compels utmost attention and action over time, time that makes no promises.
Karin Halvorson Hillhouse
Washington
Providing Help for the Homeless and the Mentally Ill
To the Editor:
Re “Citing Safety, New York Moves Mentally Ill People From the Subway” (news article, May 11):
As New Yorkers daily enter our transit system, the sight of men and women sleeping on station benches or in subway cars causes mixed emotions ranging from dismay to fear to disgust. The mantra from the riders, either mumbled or spoken aloud, usually goes: “Why can’t the mayor clean this up?”
And it’s a mantra that has, for decades now, moved mayors, under the guise of compassion, to take aggressive action to remove from the subways those who are poor, more often than not homeless, and desperately struggling with mental health issues.
Of course, the cynics in us understand the politics of the moment and the need for mayors to show strength and resolve, even if their actions provide only a short-term fix.
Yes, these are difficult and seemingly intractable problems. But we’re never going to find lasting solutions unless we begin to understand and address the root issues.
As a start, we need to understand how these folks were allowed to fall deeper and deeper into the cracks. How community-based health and mental health systems — often nonexistent or, at best, bare-bones in poor communities — were unable to provide any real, meaningful support before they became so lost to us.
Most immediately, though, the city should engage with high-quality mental health teams to inundate the subway system, offering more than just a stay in a dilapidated shelter or an involuntary commitment to a psychiatric facility. And it should study the work of other cities, which have used programs such as Housing First to help address the mental health issues of those living on the streets by providing permanent housing.
Arnold S. Cohen
New York
The writer is an adjunct professor at Fordham Law School and former president of Partnership for the Homeless.