Matters Of Fact

  Sent to the Boston Globe December 14, 2025 To the editor: Reading the article "Can Gaza plans get off drawing board?" (Sunday, December 14), I couldn't help notice the fatal contradiction between the fact that Hamas, the leader of the barbaric October 7 slaughter and architect of the strategy which ensured the destruction of most of Gaza, have made clear it will never voluntarily disarm and the unwillingness of outside forces to confront and disarm Hamas. Obviously, without the disarmament of Hamas, including the destruction of its terror infrastructure, including its still extensive complex of terror tunnels and its weapons and rocket arsenal, the well-meaning Trump plan will merely amount to a break before the next wave of Hamas terror attacks and the next Gaza war, with any reconstruction of Gaza again destroyed. And the self-imposed misery of the Palestinian Arabs, most of whom still support Hamas and its genocidal agenda, will continue. Sincerely, Alan Stein

Sent to the Boston Herald November 24, 2025 To the editor: Re the Associated Press article "Israel launches strikes in ceasefire's latest test" (Boston Herald, November 23): Israel's strikes were indeed another test of the ceasefire with Hamas, but not quite in the way misleadingly implied by the Associated Press. Hamas has been constantly violating the terms of the ceasefire, with its failure, more than six weeks after the start of the ceasefire, to return all the hostages it kidnapped October 7, 2023 despite the agreement that it would do so within 72 hours, being one of its smallest, albeit more dramatic, violations. The only party making Hamas pay any price for its constant violations is Israel, whose enforcement of the terms provides the only hope that that ceasefire will endure and lead to the disarmament of the Hamas and destruction of its terror infrastructure. Unless those provisions are enforced, this ceasefire will simply repeat the failures of all previous...

 To The Guardian: The episode "Inside Iran as the bombs fall" was one of the most misleading and factually nonsensical to which I've listened. Your "peace activist" made it sound as if the United States and Israel were repeatedly violating international law by targeting civilians, which we all know is not true; they are both targeting Iran's illicit nuclear and missile facilities along with the terrorist IRCG and police who murdered 30,000 Iranian civilians in a matter of days. Not one mention was made of the fact that almost all of Iran's missiles have been aimed at civilians, in blatant violation of international law, as well as using cluster bombs against civilians. She also offhandedly referred to Israel committing genocide, which says more about the way the ICC has become a tool of the worst elements in the world, including Iran, than about Israel, yet there was no pushback against that specious slander. The Guardian long ago abandoned any pretense ...

 Sent to: bpr@wgbh.org, info@wgbh.org, ooffice@npr.org and feedback@npr.org [Since this concerns the podcast hosted by Jim Braude and Margery Eagan, please share this letter with them.] To Boston Public Radio I was truly astounded when I listened to the portion of the podcast "BPR Full Show 3/04" Superintendent Priya Tahiliani Says Brockton Was 'A Perfect Match' having to do with the current battle with Iran. The podcasts contained an amazing amount of misleading statements, misguided statements and outright lies, something of which that the hosts kept falsely Trump Administration officials, particularly the Secretary of State. As one of the most prominent examples: "Secretary of State Marco Rubio seemingly let the truth out yesterday about the rationale for attack. It was actually two days ago for attacking Iran. But of course, he very quickly backtracked. Here are his original statements. We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action. We knew that that w...

Submitted to the Boston Globe November 11, 2025 To the editor: Globe readers should be aware of facts that rarely if ever make it into the newspaper. When Hamas started the Gaza war with its barbaric October 7 massacre, it was obvious that it was a war between good and evil. Two years later, Israel remains the force for good and Hamas and its supporters remain on the side of evil. Despite Hamas turning virtually every home, school, hospital and mosque in Gaza into a terror base, using them both to attack Israelis and to use them and the civilians in them to protect its terrorist fighters, despite its admitted strategy of using civilians as human shields and trying to maximize its own civilian casualties, Israel managed to keep the civilian to combatant casualty ratio down to historically low levels, roughly a ninth of that recognized as the norm for urban warfare by the United Nations Security Council in 2022. In the course of the war, as a tiny democracy fighting on nine different fro...

Sent to The New York Times November 9, 2025 To the editor: The fact that Zoran Mamdani never had a real job in his life and gave no evidence of being able to manage New York City should have been sufficient to prevent anyone interested in the future of the city from voting for him. The fact that his agenda, if put into effect, would bankrupt New York and drive away its most productive residents should have been sufficient to prevent any intelligent person from voting for him. The fact that he is a committed socialist and, to put it euphemistically, socialism has been an abject failure everywhere it's been tried, should have been sufficient to prevent any sane voter from giving him his or her vote. The fact that he refuses to publicly recognize that Hamas is a barbaric terrorist group supported by America's worst enemies whose values irreconcilably conflict with American values and which must be disarmed should have been sufficient to prevent any American citizen who loves our c...