ABOUT THOSE PROTESTS…
Rob Pokalsky’s letter regarding abortion protesters (The
Mail, July 5) sounded so rational that it would probably never occur to anyone
that it might not be true, especially since the protesters call themselves
Christian.
I would invite anyone with doubt or curiosity to come watch
their tactics some Saturday morning. Had you been there on a recent Saturday,
you would have heard them blasting the following messages through a megaphone:
To a mother carrying a 6-month-old: “They have killed children as big as
the baby in your carrier!” To a mother with a 7-year-old: “Don’t take
that child in there. Planned Parenthood murders children in cold blood!”
To a young couple: “Keep your dignity. Keep your legs
crossed and say no!” To another couple: “He doesn’t love you; he only
wants your body.” To another: “If he were a real man, he would marry
you.” How do the protesters know who is single and who is married? They
often warn patients not to let the “lesbian” escorts come near them.
Mr. Pokalsky said: “The main purpose of our presence as
pro-lifers is to offer information.” If that were the case, they wouldn’t
want to anger, humiliate, or intimidate patients, would they? Yet this is what
they’ve been doing for the 12 years I’ve been escorting patients into the
clinic.
What protesters won’t admit is that they deplore all forms
of birth control. They pretend they are protesting abortions when in reality
they want nothing to interfere with conception. Ergo, whatever they can say or
do to scare patients away from health care is acceptable. This is what the
pro-lifers call “counseling,” yet it serves only to make the
protesters feel righteous.
Sylvia Rose, Pelham Road, Brighton
‘SMART’ ARMIES
Our country is slowly learning the very hard way that
invading other countries in blind retaliation to terrorist action is a very
ineffective and expensive response. Israel’s
response to the kidnapping of two soldiers falls into the same category. Many
people are dying, a country is being destroyed, but basic problems, rather than
being solved, have been greatly exacerbated.
In Afghanistan
and Iraq our
armies, in spite of having high-tech “smart” weapons, have killed
many more civilians than soldiers. The situation in the Israel-Hezbollah
conflict is even worse. The “murdering” Hezbollah, without the
“smart” weapons, has been able to kill significantly more Israeli
soldiers than Israeli civilians. On the other hand, the Israeli army, with all
its high-tech weapons, has killed more than 10 times as many innocent Lebanese
civilians than it has killed its professed targets, the Hezbollah
“terrorists.” This great difference in the target deaths makes one question
the motives of Israel
in this conflict.
DaanZwick, Rochester
BACK, FOR THE MOMENT
It was truly satisfying to read Paul Goldberg’s letter,
“Hezbollah’s the Murderer” (The Mail, August 9). It is long past the
time for our US
media to shed itself of its rigid far-left stance.
With Goldberg’s letter and “Children of the
Incarcerated” (August 9) you have brought me back to City — for the time
being.
Doris Smith Naundorf, PictureBookPark, West Bloomfield
MIDDLE EAST ‘MYTHS’
I subscribe to everything Paul Goldberg said, and I commend
you for posting his letter (“Hezbollah’s the Murderer,” The Mail, August 9).
A few days ago, there appeared in the Democrat and
Chronicle’s Letters to the Editor section a piece from some lady repeating the
usual trite arguments about Palestinian victim-hood, the refusal of Israel to
deal with Hamas (which has “generously” offered to recognize the
right of Israel to exist without mentioning the condition that Israel commit
suicide by allowing the 3 to 4 million Palestinian refugees to return), and,
naturally, the canard that all Israel has to do is withdraw to the so-called
pre-1967 borders and all will be peachy.
The “occupied territories” is one of the most
enduring myths of the Middle East, and the Palestinians’
return is simply a smokescreen meant to hide the desire to destroy Israel.
But let me come to what I think motivates you and other
liberals vis-a-vis the Arab-Israeli conflict and all other issues. It is not
compassion for the poor, desire for justice, love of humanity, but, plain and
simply, hatred for George W. Bush and his administration, and their pro-Israeli
stance. You are in danger of surrendering total control of the Democratic Party
to a kook fringe of hate-mongers.
It is this hatred that blinds liberals and leads them to
gloat over the primary defeat of an honest and stalwart Democrat like Joe
Lieberman, side with a raving lunatic like the current president of Iran,
justify the wanton slaughter of 3,000 innocents by the exponents of a bankrupt
ideology that only the accident of oil wealth has given the means to lash out
in frustration at the West, and call “freedom fighters” the hideous
criminals of Hezbollah, led by a sheik who expresses the vilest anti-Semitic
rhetoric, while turning your nose up at the only democracy, Israel, in that
part of the world. Who do you think is going to make you wear a burka if they
win? Olmert or Nasrallah?
Italo G. Savella, FernwoodPark, Rochester
Mary Anna Towler’s
response: Oh, my goodness. If you can find examples of my siding with Ahmadinejad
or justifying the tragedy of 9/11, do send ’em to me. And there’s a difference
between endorsing terrorists’ actions and viewing them in the context of
history and current policies. Little that happens in the Middle East
happens in isolation, much as the Bush administration believes otherwise.
I didn’t gloat over Lieberman’s defeat, but I believe he’s
been wrong on many issues. And like others who are concerned about where the
Bush administration is leading us, I hoped that Lieberman would lose the
primary and hold the same hope for November.
Finally: not turning my nose up at Israel
doesn’t preclude my questioning some of its actions, which this newspaper has
done (and did so long before the Bush presidency).
RIGHT-WING REYNOLDS
I am embarrassed to watch Congressman Tom Reynolds’ campaign
ad in favor of weakening environmental protection laws and regulations in order
to get jobs. What we need are good-paying jobs that are environmentally
sensitive to the water, air, and soil. But Reynolds would be happy to weaken or
eliminate the environmental protections people worked very hard for in the
1970’s, such as the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act.
Reynolds does not tell us the truth: that he is a right-wing
neoconservative with an over 90 percent approval rating from the very
conservative American Conservative Union. He is part of the same thinking as
the gang in DC, which would, if it could, eliminate all environmental
protections, laws, and regulations. He is Ann Coulter in a suit and tie.
More embarrassing yet is that he will win re-election in a
moderate district where most people do not know what he really stands for.
Stewart Epstein, Westside Drive, Rochester
WRITING TO CITY
We welcome and encourage readers’ letters for publication.
Send them to: themail@rochester-citynews.com or The Mail, City Newspaper, 250
North Goodman Street, Rochester14607.
Our guidelines: We don’t publish anonymous letters — and
we ask that you include your street name and city/town/village. We don’t
publish letters that have been sent to other media — and we don’t publish form letters generated by activist groups. While
we don’t restrict length, letters of under 350 words
have a greater chance of being published. We do edit letters for clarity and
brevity. And in general we don’t publish letters (or longer “op-ed” pieces)
from the same writer more often than about once every two months.
This article appears in Aug 23-29, 2006.
