Matters Of Fact

Sent to the MetroWest Daily News January 31, 2025: Dear Editor: Why are euphemisms used all the time when reporting on the barbaric, evil Hamas terror group? And why are unsupported assertions by Hamas repeated as fact, while the facts provided by Israel are either ignored or discounted with qualifiers such as "according to an Israeli toll?" On the last day of January, I read two relevant articles, "8 more hostages freed in at-times chaotic handover" and "US contractors to staff Gaza checkpoint." In the first, "chaotic" hardly describe Hamas, which perversely is never referred to as a terror group but usually with the euphemism "militant," deliberately organized an angry mob consisting of uniformed terrorists and ordinary "civilians" to harass the young female hostages finally being released after being brutalized in Hamas' terror tunnels for 15 months. Only near the end of the article was there a single, short paragraph r...

Sent to the Boston Globe January 29, 2025: Dear Editor: Reading the article "For Palestinians returning north, elation and despair" (Wednesday, January 29, 2025), I can't help but think of an important lesson it contains. When you choose a government made up of barbaric genocidal terrorist thugs and that government turns most of the homes, schools, hospitals, mosques and UNRWA facilities into armories, including tens of thousands of rockets, builds an extensive network of subterranean terror tunnels underneath civilian structures and with entrances into many of them, turns the civilians into human shields, repeatedly launches rockets and other terror attacks against a peaceful, democratic, sovereign neighbor and then launches a barbaric attack, beheading babies and burning them in ovens, gang raping innocent young women before murdering them and then bringing their dead, half-naked bodies back as hostages and parading them before cheering crowds, that sovereign neighbor t...

Sent to Rutland Herald (letters@rutlandherald.com) and Palm Beach Post (letters@pbpost.com) January 27, 2025. Dear Editor: The recent Danziger cartoon, distortingly captioned "Some Israeli Hostages Are Home After Over a Year of Merciless War," blatantly and irresponsibly inverts reality both with its caption and the text "Over 40 thousand Palestinians killed ...." The caption should read "A tiny number of innocent Israeli Hostages Are Home, along with hundreds of Palestinian Arab terrorists, After Over a Year of Merciless War started by Hamas with its barbaric pogrom on October 7, 2024." The text should read "The Hamas terrorists claim over 40 thousand Palestinians killed, but fail to mention roughly half of them were terrorists, making the proportion of civilian casualties in Gaza historically low thanks to the unprecedented steps taken by the Israeli military, arguably the most moral in the world." Sincerely, Alan Stein

Sent to the Boston Globe January 25, 2025: Dear Editor: Kenneth Roth, whose stewardship of the once admirable NGO Human Rights Watch, compelled Robert Bernstein to renounce the organization he founded because of Roth's fanatical demonization of Israel, is totally off base with his op-ed "Harvard's new approach to antisemitism is dangerous." Contrary to Roth's assertion, the IHRA definition of antisemitism has absolutely nothing to do with inhibiting free expression. It merely provides the gold standard for understanding what constitutes antisemitism. It does no more to inhibit free expression than observing that the hateful use of the N-word is racist. Indeed, the fact that a hateful screed like Roth's could be a featured op-ed in a respected newspaper like the Boston Globe proves the falsity of his arguments. Sincerely, Alan Stein 

Sent to the Boston Globe January 20, 2025 Dear Editor: My elation over the release of Romi Gonen, Emily Damari and Doron Steibrecher is tempered by the realization that there are still 81 hostages being brutalized by Hamas in their terror tunnels, that the 90 terrorists released by Israel will almost certainly murder many more innocent people and the ceasefire will be used by Hamas to rearm, reorganize and prepare to perpetrate many more bloody atrocities. Sincerely, Alan Stein

 Letter to CNN Sent to Deborah Rayner deborah.rayner@warnermedia.com •Ryan Kadro at ryan.kadro@warnermedia.com Veronica Molina at veronica.molina@warnermedia.com • Copy Christiane Amanpour at christiane.amanpour@warnermedia.com bcc letters@camera.org Sent to CNN January 28, 2025. Unprofessionally, Ms. Rayner blocked letters criticizing the unprofessional interview given by Christiane Amanpour, so this letter never reached her. Dear Ms. Rayner, Mr. Kadro and Ms. Molina: I watched the softball interview of Husam Zomlot by Christiane Amanpour and was, as is usually the case when Amanpour has anything to do with the genocidal Palestinian Arab war designed to destroy Israel, she acted as a propagandist for the Palestinian Arabs rather than a legitimate journalist. As is usually the case when Palestinian Authority officials are interviewed, Zumlot repeatedly lied but was never called out or even questioned about his numerous lies by Amanpour. Among his lies: He repeatedly referred t...