Letters to the Editor | Nov. 15, 2023

Let’s face it, the Democrats would have criticized anyone who was elected speaker of the House, and they didn’t disappoint. The usual MAGA comments flowed, just like they do in response to almost every situation where they have nothing else to offer. While the speaker vacancy will not go down as the GOP’s greatest hour, the unintended result was that it distracted the country from the real leadership problems in the executive branch.

The disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan began a steady deterioration in the international standing of the United States. We are seen as weak and indecisive. It is concerning that our troops have faced repeated attacks from Iran-backed militants without an appropriate response. Just saying, “Don’t!” does not cut it. “Don’t!” is not a viable foreign policy in dealing with Iran. Words mean nothing to them. Decisive action is needed. Waiting for a military fatality to react cannot be an option.

Now we hear of a meeting with President Xi Jinping at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. China has repeatedly provoked the U.S. (surveillance balloon, spy cells, cyberattacks, etc.) over the past several years. Half of Joe Biden’s cabinet has already traveled to China and been played like a fiddle while there. We can only hope that our president will take a hard line with them to regain some of our dignity. There is too much at stake. Unfortunately, there is no evidence that it will happen.

Mark Fenstermaker, Warminster

Amid all the talk, the real issue of finding a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has not been discussed. To have true peace, there must be some degree of trust. Trust requires some respect. Hamas’ only goal is to destroy Israel and presumably to kill or deport all Israeli Jews. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will never accept a separate Palestinian state and is beholden to ultraorthodox Jews who refuse to fight, except when they are attacking Palestinian settlements on the West Bank. Meanwhile, Mahmoud Abbas, head of the Palestinian National Authority, is old, his regime is corrupt, and he is a Holocaust denier.

Clearly, there can be no peace that matters as long as the status quo remains. Goal one is somehow to have new governance across the board. Second is to make life much better for Palestinian citizens of Israel. Third is to get some of that money the Gulf States are spending on sports to invest in ending refugee camps and to help rebuild a Palestinian economy on the West Bank and Gaza without Israeli settlements. A tall order, no doubt, but the only one that will not see this story repeat and repeat for another 75 years. Yes, it will require great American and international diplomatic and messaging efforts, as well as money and man power.

Mitchell Rothman, Merion

Solomon Jones needs to check his arguments before he starts flinging words around and hurting people. In his recent column about Kensington drug affairs, he uses the phrase “harm reduction” like it explains the city’s utterly shameful non-approach to handling the crisis. Harm reduction is a concept rooted in understanding the humanity of individuals suffering from addiction, and looking to make sure they do the least damage to themselves while caught in the throes of a dangerous disease. I don’t see anything like that coming from City Hall.

If the city was engaged in harm reduction, we would have safe injection sites — leading to treatment of the disease that is addiction. Instead, the entire city (look around: sidewalks, parks, subways), with Kensington as the heartrending epicenter, is an unsafe injection site. Harm reduction has won? Friend, if harm reduction had won, there would be no occasion for the photograph accompanying the article: Councilmember Quetcy Lozada walking past strung out people with nowhere better to go than her district’s sidewalk.

One thing I agree with Jones about is that police are doing literally nothing to aid the situation. Talk with an actual harm reduction volunteer (small groups of local volunteers, I stress, not any arm of our uncaring city, its policymakers, or the mysterious “faraway academics” Jones references but does not explain), and they will tell you what it’s like to attempt to reverse an overdose at K&A while cops stand by and look on, indifferent as to whether the victim is still alive.

Andrew Davis, Philadelphia

The savageries of Hamas’ attack on Israel and Israel’s Draconian response have elicited powerful emotional responses and conflict in families. Grief, fear, and rage — the most prominent reactions to the events in the Middle East — can strip away the tenuous rationality of adulthood and take disagreeing family members back to the emotional intensity of old intrafamilial conflicts. In stressful situations of conflict, emotional maturity enables people to think before acting or advocating, to listen to what the other person is saying, to recognize the emotions and needs of others, and to recognize the complexities of reality, even if that reality is painful.

Families struggling with conflict regarding this terrible crisis, as reported by Zoe Greenberg in her Inquirer article on generational fractures over Israel and Gaza, could avoid the fractures she describes if they would try to empathize with the feelings that prompt their relatives to disagree with them and to search for areas of common ground in addition to presenting their own argument. Societies are much better off when their leaders and citizens guide themselves by principles of emotional maturity. Families are, too

Ralph E. Fishkin, member, board of directors, American Psychoanalytic Association, Philadelphia

I have been a real estate agent since I first got a license in Maryland in 1980. My parents and grandparents were also licensed Realtors. Rightly or wrongly, sellers have paid the buyer’s commission for more than 100 years. A recent court decision may change that, but it won’t change the fact that buying or selling a home can be a complex process. I spend my working day using my knowledge, experience, and resources to make every transaction as smooth and trouble-free as possible for my seller and buyer clients. I want to be the only participant in the transaction with sleepless nights and am an essential asset.

For instance, there have been many times when one of my low-income buyers needed to find a special mortgage program with a grant, then had to look at 50 to 100 homes to find the property that was in the right condition and location. Tell me how I am supposed to help these aspiring homeowners without the seller paying the buyer’s agent commission, which means the buyer is essentially financing their share.

No doubt the National Association of Realtors and the lawyers working on a class-action lawsuit will figure out a workable solution. In the meantime, families keep growing, elders keep passing away, new jobs keep being offered in faraway locations, people keep getting married and divorced, empty nesters keep downsizing, and I’ll be there to help them find their way through the maze — as long as I can still earn enough to pay my bills.

Karen Joslin, Philadelphia

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