Letters to the Editor
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

‘Arab TV Instructs on Wife-Beating’
The New York Sun’s foreign pages of October 20, 2004, are one more illustration, if one were needed, of the fatuous futility of the United Nations and its criminal conspiracy to single out Israel for unrelenting and unwarranted vilification for alleged violations of human rights.
In the first column on Page 9, the Sun reported some interesting instructions on how to beat your wife from Arab religious leaders, jurists and other intellectuals [“Arab TV Instructs On Wife-Beating,” Steven Stalinsky].
In the last column, the Sun excerpted some of the vicious, gratuitous assaults on Israel by a paid official of the U.N. in his violently prejudiced report on the state of human rights in the region [“Israeli Groups Call for Dismissal of U.N. Official,” Benny Avni]. In the mean time, our own bien pensant intellectuals and tenured professors from Columbia to Kalamazoo are looking for new ways to join the clamor of the paid propagandists for wife-beating Palestinians. See university chairs financed by the Saudis and other terrorist organizations.
Apparently, they cannot bear the sight of Israel’s free press, its raucously free political system that welcomes Arab members to its parliament, its liberal education system, equal treatment of women, market economy, and other offenses to Islamic sensibilities.
How long, one must wonder, before an outraged public, nauseated by such blatant hypocrisy and barely disguised anti-Semitism, revolts and demands the dismantling of the barbaric hoax that the U.N. has become and the dismissal of teachers that violently politicize and distort their missions? Haven’t we had enough?
HENRY SHERMAN
Manhattan
Suozzi and Albany
I read William F. Hammond Jr.’s column regarding Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi’s “Fix Albany” campaign [“Suozzi’s Campaign Against Albany,” New York, October 13, 2004]. Many Nassau County readers would agree with legislator and deputy minority leader Peter Schmidt’s assessment and prefer that Mr. Suozzi first fix Nassau County and abandon his self-seeking political campaign for Albany.
Mr. Suozzi’s first two years as county executive were defined as being “hands on” and dedicated to working in a bipartisan fashion to craft solutions critical to Nassau County. In 2004, the handsome and popular county executive abandoned this successful bipartisan ideology for an ineffective one that was more partisan and centered on seeking higher office resulting in the “Fix Albany” campaign. It is extremely crucial to Nassau County that we have an effective county executive who is solely dedicated to tackling the twin deficits of $200 million each remaining in 2005 and 2006.
I believe Mr. Suozzi is disingenuous when he suggests that the resistance he discovered trying to create a new water and sewer authority was an example of Albany gridlock. As a resident of Nassau County, I thought state Senator Dean Skelos was correct to question the transfer of county sewer and storm water assets to the failed proposed Sewer and Water Authority sponsored by Mr. Suozzi. The proposed authority would have dramatically compromised Nassau County’s sole source aquifer and, consequently, the abundance of available drinking water. The proposed authority would have had its own ability to borrow as much as $300 million. Given the lack of transparency by many state authorities, Mr. Skelos was apprehensive about creating another authority that would not answer to the people.
State Senator Carl Marcellino joined Mr. Skelos in challenging Mr. Suozzi’s purported Medicaid solution, which would substantially increase the aggregate tax burden borne by Long Island residents. Why isn’t Mr. Suozzi seeking assistance from New York’s Senators Schumer and Clinton and the balance of Nassau County’s congressional representation in Washington to pursue an equitable Medicaid funding level from the federal government? New York’s 50% rate is lower than that of 39 other states. Mr. Suozzi demonstrates his empty political ambition lashing out at effective public servants such as Senators Skelos and Marcellino through “Fix Albany” without seeking intelligent relief from our federal government representation.
Mr. Suozzi is both smug and condescending when he lectures voters “that incumbents win whether they do a good job or not,” suggesting that job performance is not a consideration or that they are above being held accountable. After an initial promising two years of being an effective county executive, it might be appropriate if the residents begin a campaign to fix Nassau and vote out Mr. Suozzi when he seeks re-election for the ineffective, partisan campaign he undertook in 2004.
MICHAEL P. MULHALL
Point Lookout, N.Y.
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