I agree with Eric Ruskin’s assessment of the Highland Park library fiasco (“Let’s Mitigate the Fiasco in Highland Park,” June 20, 2019) but disagree with his suggested solution to the problem. Scheduling an alternative program to “mitigate” the effect of the Bashi reading, merely substitutes the word “mitigate” for “compromise” but does nothing to overcome what so many of us in the Jewish community find so objectionable, the reading of the ‘alphabet book’ for children, “P is for Palestine” in the first place. Taking a page from Ruskin’s ‘what if analogy:

What if a burglar came into your house with the openly stated intention of stealing all your valuables, and then you, he and the police held a secret meeting and decided that as a “compromise” he would only steal half your valuables. Would you consider that to be an equitable solution?

What Ruskin did not make clear in his op-ed was that the “compromise” held behind closed doors in Highland Park, resulted in the intention to reschedule the programs, although it has not been implemented yet. We feel a much better solution than to “compromise” or “mitigate” is to continue to fight to try to stop the reading of the book in any context. Allowing the pro-BDS, pro-Palestinian groups to present their program in our town would only embolden them then to ‘take it on the road’ and present it in other communities, which is in fact is their stated objective. We find this totally unacceptable and hope that other communities understand the implications of these actions.