Letters about letters
In response to “Sleeping with baby” (Letters, December 6), I tend to disagree with the notion that it is not risky to sleep with your baby.
The recently updated guidelines of the American Academy of Pediatrics address the situation of tired mothers falling asleep while breastfeeding. The guidelines call for mothers to breastfeed in bed, not on a couch or sofa, if they sense they might fall asleep.
There is an elevated risk level (x 21) associated with sleeping with a baby on a couch or sofa. Falling asleep with a baby in bed is the lesser risk (although it’s still very risky).
As soon as a parent who falls asleep with a baby (on a couch, sofa or bed) awakes, he or she should put the baby back in its crib. The safest place for babies to sleep is in a separate bed or crib in the parents’ room for at least the first six months, and preferably until the baby is a year old.
ANAT SHATZ Tel Aviv
The writer is an ear, nose and throat surgeon and chairs the Israeli Foundation for the Study and Prevention of Sudden Infant Death.
Reader Efraim A. Cohen (“Matter of land,” Letters, December 6) states that the taking of private land for the benefit of a specific community (Amona) is unfair, and in his indignation has the temerity to compare it to the Nazis’ confiscation of Jewish property. Some people will go to any extreme to win people over to their point of view.
As an American-trained attorney, Mr. Cohen knows very well that taking land for public use has often resulted in land being confiscated from private individuals for the benefit of a small segment of society and being turned over to private developers or deeded to individuals. Not only are there innumerable cases of such confiscation and turnover, but they have been upheld by the highest courts as being in the interest of the public.
The right of eminent domain is embedded in the US Constitution’s 5th Amendment, proscribing that private property may not be taken for public use without just compensation. This was required to be worded in such a way because the English common law system, upon which US law was based, allowed for the confiscation of private property by the sovereign without compensation.
Taking land from private owners with payment (if the owners can be identified) for a project that is in the public interest is not foreign or reprehensible to American democracy (which is certainly not worse than Israeli democracy), and certainly should not be compared to Nazi confiscation of Jewish property.
If the Israeli government has the right to confiscate land for military reasons, this right would apply to any public purpose. The issue is only political.
HARVEY DOUGLEN Jerusalem
The writer is a former deputy attorney-general of the State of New Jersey, with experience in the confiscation of various types of property, including real estate, for just compensation.