‘Thanks Free World’

Thanks, Claudia Rosett, for your article on March 15, 2005: “Million Lebanese Stage Massive Retort to Terrorists” [Page 1]. I am the woman who held high the poster “Thank’s Free World” [sic]. Sorry for the spelling. From all my heart, please let me repeat this again and again:

“Thanks Free World”
“Thanks Free World”
“Thanks Free World”
“Thanks Free World”
“Thanks Free World”
“Thanks Free World”

RAWYA OKAL
Beirut, Lebanon

‘The Evolving Eighth’

Re: “The Evolving Eighth,” Editorial, March 2, 2005: The U.S. Supreme Court ignored the 10th Amendment. This Amendment protects the states and the people from federal tyranny. The 10th Amendment reads, “Those powers not specifically given to the Federal government remain to the states or to the people.”

Ours is a land of the rule of law, laws that are passed by our elected representatives, not by rule of one man, Justice Anthony Kennedy. Mr. Kennedy wrote the majority opinion, and he was the pivotal vote with no accountability to the people. Kennedy admitted that he was influenced in his vote by referencing “international law.” Mr. Kennedy must be reminded this sovereign country and will of the people are governed by the contents of the U.S. Constitution and not by “international law.”

MARK JACKSON
Naples, Fla.

The Gujarat Riots

This letter is regarding a piece written by Josh Gerstein on Narendra Modi’s visit to America [“Matthews of ‘Hardball’ Retreats From Speech After Muslim Protest,” Page 1, March 10, 2005].

First of all, there is ongoing investigation going on in India regarding the 2002 Gujarat riots. As in America, Mr. Modi is innocent until proven guilty. There is no reason why he should not be allowed to come to America.

Gujarat riots were sparked off when a Muslim crowd burned alive 59 innocent women and children, which the human-rights groups and the Muslim organizations do not mention. This is not to pardon or excuse the riots, which killed many innocent Muslims and Hindus. Many Hindus lost their lives, which is also not mentioned by the Muslims and human rights groups.

THEKEMADOM RAMAKRISHNAN
Bethlehem, Pa.

Israel’s Original Sin?

Reader Ramzi Kassem calls Columbia Law School Dean David Schizer’s expressions of support for the creation of Israel “obscene” and “historically blind” because the dean did not mention Israel’s allegedly “original sin” of the “destruction of Palestinian society” [“Israel at Columbia,” Letters, March 11, 2005].

But Mr. Kassem refuses to mention that on Israel’s founding the surrounding Arab nations launched a war of genocide against Israel’s Jews – a mere three years after the genocide of Europe’s Jews – and Arab leaders wildly boasted that there would be no Jewish survivors. War is hell, Mr. Kassem, and that genocidal war caused massive casualties among Jews and Arabs alike. The Jews of Israel refused to acquiesce to a second Holocaust and owe no apologies. The Arabs who refused to flee the Jewish state at the behest of this Arab genocide machine now live in a modern, democratic country, which gives them more rights than any Arab, state in history. The Arabs need to accept responsibility for their sins rather than fabricate history and project them onto others.

HARRY J. REIDLER
Englewood, N.J.

Rethinking Iwo Jima

In “Rethinking the Iwo Jima Myth” [Opinion, March 11, 2005], Max Boot states: “Our awe at the bravery of the Marines and their Japanese adversaries should not cause us to overlook the stupidity that forced them into this unnecessary meat grinder.” When I watch documentaries about Iwo Jima, I am not awed by the bravery of the Japanese soldiers. I feel about them the same way I feel about the maniacal murderers in Iraq who every day summarily execute young Iraqi soldiers and policemen who are fighting for democracy and who murder civilians every chance they get in the name of their twisted version of Islamic fundamentalism. The Japanese soldiers who fought on Iwo must have known about the rape of Nanking, the Bataan Death March, the total degradation of any American soldier who allowed himself to be captured alive, etc. Indeed many of them almost certainly participated in these evil acts themselves. Does Mr. Boot want to argue that they are not responsible for their evil actions? Although they did not deserve to be treated as war criminals and for those among them who did not believe in their regime’s cruelty, I feel sorry – but I could never feel in awe of them.

DAVID M. O’NEILL
Manhattan

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