Letters, Nov. 1

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 01/11/2023 (1052 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

World of difference

I know that in the past Dan Lett has written about the condition of U.S and Manitoba highways and that the difference is in the amount of funding and effort put into maintenance. That made perfect sense to me until Oct. 28.

I was returning from a trip to Minneapolis and coming home via Fargo and Grand Forks. Enroute, my GPS advised me that there was a closed road and that I would be rerouted. I consulted MB 511 Road conditions and learned that Highway 75 was closed between Emerson and Morris.

I was still a few hours away and the sun was starting to come out so I thought things might improve by the time I got there. As I traveled up I-29, I kept looking for deteriorating road conditions such as ice or a bit of snow pack, maybe some glare of light frost. Nothing! I-29 was a bald, perfect road. I even pulled off on to a side road to check to see if 75 was opened. It wasn’t but my point is that the side road was also in excellent condition.

We got to the border on a perfectly clear road. As soon as we pulled out of the Canada Custom’s parking lot, everything changed. The roads went from clear, clear, clear to a shiny slippery ice rink. We had to reroute via Emerson to a smaller country highway and it took over three hours to get from Emerson to Morris. Luckily, there was a bright full moon and very little traffic so we crawled along at about 25 km/h.

My question is this: the weather doesn’t just stop at the international border. What is the difference? Do the Americans use a different surfacing? I didn’t seem that they had sanded or salted the highway. The cost to the trucking industry must be affected. Trucks were lined up through the main road in Morris. Surely, we can do better than this for the safety of our motorists and for the trucking industry.

Wendy Chapman

Winnipeg

On Oct. 29, my husband and I drove out of Winnipeg heading south for the winter. The highway had just been declared reopened and travel ready. A drive to the border via highway 75 usually takes approximately one hour but not that day. Two and a half hours later we were finally waiting in line at the border.

Only one lane was barely drivable forcing all cars and semis to navigate the jagged ice road while trying to keep one set of wheels on any patch of pavement available.

After crossing the border, the roads were bone dry and I mean dry. My question is why. I really don’t understand how this can happen so often and yet nothing is done about it. This highway appears to be fairly busy with lots of truck traffic. Maybe we should borrow a page from the U.S. book on snow removal.

On Monday, the highway was closed again. While this method might be cheaper, it’s not always better.

Debbie Bevan

Winnipeg

Ceasefire won’t fix all

While leaders of Middle Eastern countries, including Turkey, have been quick to call for a ceasefire and condemn Israel’s incursion into Gaza, they have failed to make any offer that would ensure that Hamas was unable to attack Israel, as it did on Oct. 7. What might they do?

Affirming Israel’s right to exist and normalizing relationships would go a long way. Hamas could never hope to drive Israel out on its own and presumably believes, perhaps rightly, that other nations in the region would help destroy Israel if the opportunity arose. Hamas needs to be disabused of that belief.

Countries in the Middle East could also commit to stop arming Hamas, either directly by providing weapons or indirectly by funding. They could promise to sanction any country that violated such restrictions.

A third possibility is to call for and perhaps provide a peacekeeping force to prevent Hamas from building tunnels and amassing weapons for another assault on Israel. If the Middle East promoted a peacekeeping initiative at the United Nations, many countries would follow their lead.

Simply calling for a ceasefire by Israel is only a half solution. Yes, the death of civilians on both sides is horrible, but there is a difference between so-called “collateral damage” from war and deliberately targeting innocent groups.

There was no strategic objective of the Hamas attack. Its sole purpose was to kill as many Jews as possible, including young people attending a concert who were clearly not a threat. If it is truly concerned about peace and saving innocent lives, the Middle East must not allow that to happen again.

Jim Clark

Winnipeg

Speak out now

I was born in Montreal shortly after the Second World War into a very small Jewish refugee family, largely as a result of the Holocaust. I’ve just returned to Winnipeg from Montreal for an unveiling/memorial for my Aunt Gina who survived Auschwitz, Nazi forced labour camps, and the Death March out of Auschwitz. At the age of 16, she made her way out of Poland to England as an orphan, then to Montreal where she experienced antisemitism on an ongoing basis.

And then she went on to live a rich life; a life in which her indescribable trauma was never erased but within which she carved out abundant space for love, generosity, meaningful work, music and friendships across cultural and racial boundaries. I write this to make it clear that the history of the Jewish Holocaust lies deep under my skin and in my bones. As does the knowledge that many countries during and after the Second World War, including Canada, denied entry to Jewish Holocaust survivors. And so, unlike many of my fellow Jews who ally themselves with the people of Palestine, I believe that Jewish immigration post WW2 into what was then British-occupied Palestine was a necessity, not an act of colonial intent.

But what happened then to the people of Palestine, what has been happening since 1948 — a seemingly perpetual Nakba — may be understandable to me but never justifiable. What’s clear to me is that the ongoing occupation of Palestine — the denial of Palestinian’s Right to Return — has prevented Jews in Israel and outside of Israel from experiencing the possibility of sanctuary; a sweet refuge from trauma.

Please understand that I do not conflate a critique of the Israeli government’s oppression of Palestinians with antisemitism. Antisemitism is surely alive and well; it lives on independently of what Jewish people do or don’t do — say or don’t say.

Please understand that I find no justification for the Hamas massacre on Oct. 7, 2023. But I cannot turn away from the horror of what is happening to the people of Gaza. It feels like the whole world is exploding in rage and terror.

On Oct. 9, two days after the Hamas massacre, Nil Koksal of As It Happens, interviewed Siobhan Rachamim on CBC Radio. Rachamim is a Jewish Israeli woman who had been living in a border kibbutz Nahal Oz, a few hundred metres from the Gaza border, a village directly targeted by Hamas. Using a voice holding all her terror, all her loss, all her rage at Hamas, this is what she said: that unlike the citizens of Israel, the people of Gaza have no bomb shelters to run to; that the people of Gaza have never had safe places to run to; that the people of Gaza want peace.

How is it, that in the midst of horror, this woman was able to hold multiple truths in a way that seems to elude so many good people here in Winnipeg.

I beseech members of the Jewish community of Winnipeg to join me and other Jews in cities across North America under the banner of “Not in My Name” and “Never Again for Anyone and Everyone.” I believe that can make a small difference in helping us through the dark days ahead.

Frances Ravinsky

Winnipeg