Letters for Saturday, February 14, 2009

• Grieve for all victims

• Good job, sunshine!

• Education prevents drownings

Grieve for all victims

Bettejo Dux’s letter begs a response. (“Human love despairs over ignorance,” Letters, Feb. 12)

I can’t tell if your rant is against all faith relationships with God or just Judaism. As far as God giving land to anyone, I may sound a bit heretical here, but I’m with you on that one. In any event, I’m not concerned with your beliefs as a non-believer and will not spend time discussing them here. You are entitled to your beliefs, as much as I am entitled to mine.

If your tirade is about the cruelty of war and the senseless death of women and children (did you forget men?), I am in total agreement with you. 

However, if that’s the case, I don’t recalling seeing yours letters of protest and righteous indignation against the Hutu/Tutsi tortures, Sri Lankan/Tamil Tiger conflicts, the machete massacres in Kenya and the Sudan, the insurgency in the Philippines, the IRA and Great Britain hostilities, the Basque rebellion and Spanish Nationals, Bosnia/Serbia ethnic cleansing, Lebanon and its fight against Hezbollah (Syrian) occupation, or al Qaeda massacres around the globe, which are all taking place not in some distant past era, but in our lifetime.

Your righteous indignation was conspicuously absent during the last 6,500 Kassam and Katyusha rocket attacks fired from Gaza into Israeli towns and cities, the thousands of deaths of Israeli citizens (women and children, and men) by the PLO, Hezbollah, Al Aqsa Martyr Brigades, and Hamas radical Muslims/Palestinians.

I missed your outrage at the suicide/homicide bombers killing teens in a school in Jerusalem, a nursery school in Sderot, a Sbarro pizza parlor in Jerusalem, restaurants in Haifa and Tel Aviv, a bakery in Eilat, bus stations in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Beersheba, an outdoor market in Hadera, and malls in Jerusalem and Netanya.

I can grieve alongside you for the Palestinians. Can you grieve with me for the Israelis? If not, perhaps your “deepest core of human love and justice which despairs over such ignorance and murderous behavior” is really much shallower than you profess and believe it to be.

• Martin Kahn, Kapa‘a

Good job, sunshine!

We shared a table with a couple of friendly yet tired visitors while we ate our lunch at Mermaids Café the other day. They had just landed after flying 5,000 miles from Rhode Island to Kaua‘i for a warm vacation.

We observed that that is about as far as you can possibly travel from coast to coast within the United States. I asked what made them choose a Hawaiian vacation over a much shorter trip south from Rhode Island to the Bahamas or Jamaica.

And they said, “The friendliness, the people.” They cited simple examples of friendliness that they had already encountered just hours after landing.

And I thought, we are so lucky. During a worldwide recession where many people are rather helpless at improving their regional economy, we are blessed with one of the easiest tools to maintain and improve ours: being friendly.

•Tom Pickett, Kilauea

Education prevents drownings

I’ve been a Water Safety Officer for the County of Kaua‘i for nearly 25 years. I’m proud to say we’ve saved more lives than we’ve lost, but nonetheless, one life lost is one too many for us to accept.

I believe that most death by drowning are preventable. We must understand that the ocean doesn’t initiate death by drowning. It begins with the choice or decision that we make before entering the water that causes this accident. We need to be educated not only about the activity we’re undertaking and the physical demands it requires, but just as well the environment that we are entering.

It’s rather easy to say not to panic when caught in the current or a life-threatening situation in the ocean, but with proper preparation, the chances of getting yourself in a situation like this will be much less. I know that the County of Kaua‘i has been making a definite effort to prevent death by drowning on our island, but I believe that more can be done by our tourism industry and government as a whole.

For example, I believe that by having a water safety video on our arriving flights from outer destinations while having a captive audience will help educate our visitors of the hazards before they arrive. This idea is not a new one, but still one that would help greatly if implemented. Is it a problem to get the federal government involved in this decision?

We should expire all means to educate the public. All branches of government and businesses should come together to achieve our goals. If our beach resorts could hire a beach attendant to inform their guests about the conditions, hazards, equipment and safety concerns before they enter the ocean, I know it would reduce a lot of the problems that we as lifeguards face.

Beach rental businesses that rent equipment for ocean activities should have stricter guidelines as to who they rent to, and under what ocean conditions they rent their equipment out. The ethics of this type of business should be safety first. We can all be lifeguards by just taking the time to educate our visitors when they are heading into a hazardous situation.

Education is contagious and this is one virus that is worth spreading.

• Myles Emura, Kekaha