Matters Of Fact

To the editor: Reading about the allegations that America's cut off of funding to UNRWA, which has been an utter failure for seven decades, will be a disaster for the Palestinian Arabs and exacerbate what "human rights" officials refer to as an impending famine, I can't help but think of highly relevant statistics that don't seem to make it into the Boston Globe and other media. We've been told how terrible it is that barely 100 trucks are bringing aid to Gaza now, as opposed to 500 a day prior to Hamas' barbaric October 7 Massacre. What's not mentioned is that only 70 of those 500 trucks were bringing food, in contrast to more than 125 currently; the rest were bringing building, agriculture and industrial supplies - in other words, materials that were largely coopted by Hamas to prepare for its perpetration of its slaughter on October 7. There is actually 80 percent more food entering Gaza now than there was before October 7! Especially since most Gaz

Sent March 18, 2024 to the London Review of Books:  Dear Editor: It has long been commonplace for the Shoah to be used by Jew-haters as a weapon against the Jews and the tiny, beleaguered Jewish and democratic state of Israel. This weapon has been used with special viciousness in the wake of the worst, most barbaric attack on Jews since the Shoah, the October 7 Massacre perpetrated by Hamas, with the assistance of the even more radical Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the supposedly moderate Fatah, other Palestinian terror groups and thousands of ordinary Gazans. The use of the Shoah is especially perverse given that Hamas itself makes its genocidal goals clear in its charter, calling not just for the destruction of Israel and the murder of all its Jews, but the murder of Jews around the world. Hamas, of course, is also a proxy of Iran, which openly calls for the destruction of Israel and has itself perpetrated mass terror attacks against Jews far from Israel. For the London Review of Books

Sent to the Hartford Courant March 17, 2024: To the Editor: Like many others, Andreas Kluth uses Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a convenient whipping boy in his misguided article "Red lines delineate Biden-Bibi split." The Israeli prime minister does not determine war policy, unlike the way President Biden does here as commander-in-chief,  There is a war cabinet which determines that policy, with three members - Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant (whom Netanyahu tried to fire a year ago), and Benny Gantz (leader of the center-left National Unity Camp) - who decide by majority vote. In the aftermath of the October 7 Massacre, President Biden correctly said Hamas must be destroyed. The alternative is much worse than what's now happening. It is also beyond reasonable dispute that Hamas cannot be destroyed unless Israel roots it out of Rafah and takes control of the Philadelphi Corridor. Israelis, who will be the first to suffer the consequences if this is

Submitted March 16, 2024 to the Boston Globe: To the editor: I oppose a "permanent ceasefire" in Gaza because I support a permanent ceasefire there. Any "permanent ceasefire" now would be no more permanent than the one in effect on the morning of October 7 until Hamas broke it, as it broke all previous ceasefires and will break any future ceasefires as long as it has not been effectively destroyed. Calling for a ceasefire now may feel virtuous, but such a feeling is delusional. A ceasefire now would simply be a reward for Hamas and enable it to rearm, strengthen itself and when it feels ready perpetrate another bloody atrocity and start an even more violent war with more death and destruction. If you really want to save lives, then help Israel destroy Hamas, free all the hostages not already murdered by Hamas, completely destroy all the rockets, tunnels and other terror infrastructure created by Hamas - largely using the aid foolishly sent by the international commu

Submitted to The New York Times March 15, 2024: To the editor: Aaron David Miller's guest essay "Words Over Deeds: Why Biden Isn’t Pressuring Israel" should really be entitled "Why Biden Isn't Pressuring Israel Even More," given that he's been exerting tremendous pressure on Israel and constantly criticizing Israel, while barely doing anything to pressure Hamas, or the Houthis, or Hezbollah, or their overlord, Iran. The key reason is one barely even hinted at by Miller, when he writes "If the president had a compelling alternative to how Israel could wage a war in these circumstances without doing grievous harm to civilians, he might have more leverage." In that sentence, Miller tacitly reveals he's aware that Israel isn't doing "grievous harm to civilians" and that virtually all the criticism directed at Israel, including by President Biden, is unjustified. Indeed, the ratio of non-combatant to combatant deaths in Gaza is bar

Submitted to the Atlanta Journal Constitution March 15, 2024: To the editor: Reading the criticism, contained in Kathleen Collomb's explaining to her granddaughter why she shouldn't boycott President Biden's reelection, of Israel's efforts to prevent Hamas' promised repetition of its barbaric October 7 Massacre, Collomb demonstrates that Zoomers aren't the only ones falling for the lies being propagated about Israel. Here are some truths about the war Israel has been trying to avoid since terrorists took over control of Gaza in 2007. For probably the first time in history, this is a war in which one side is trying to maximize suffering and death of its own population while the other side is trying to safeguard the enemy population. Generally unreported has been one of the major reasons why five Gazans got killed when parachutes bringing aid didn't open and the aid fell on top of civilians: the planes dropped the aid from a high altitude because Hamas was fir

Published in the Washington Post, March 16, 2024: America’s complicity in Gaza’s tragedy began long before Oct. 7 and Israel’s response to that barbaric massacre. It didn’t take long after Hamas won the 2006 Palestine Legislative Council elections and violently overthrew Fatah to take control of the Gaza Strip in 2007 before it was obvious that terror group, officially recognized as such since 1997, could not be tolerated.
Yet every time attacks by Hamas — including rockets launched from Gaza and the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers — started another conflict, the United States, joined by many other countries, pressured Israel into a premature cease-fire. 
These same countries then poured even more aid into Gaza, despite warnings that much of that aid was being diverted by Hamas. As long ago as 2016, for example, then-Israeli Foreign Ministry director-general Dore Gold said 95 percent of the cement delivered to Gaza was being taken by Hamas and used for military purpose

To the editor: Reading about the vigil by Danbury's City Hall calling for a "permanent cease-fire" in Gaza, I can't help but wonder whether the participants are in favor of the American version or the Hamas version. The American version is a step towards a real, permanent peace. The Hamas version is a period during which Israel stops defending its people while Hamas rearms, takes aid meant to help the people in Gaza and uses it to build tunnels underneath homes, schools, mosques, hospitals and United Nations facilities, and prepares to perpetrate yet another, even more barbaric and bloodier atrocity. There was a "permanent cease-fire" in effect on the morning of October 7. The massacre perpetuated that morning and all the ensuing death and destruction in Gaza is a consequence of the fact that the cease-fire was the Hamas version. On October 7, Israelis were disabused of the fantasy that a cease-fire could be the American version without the total and permane

 The March 17 episode of "Up First" was truly heart-wrenching, all the more because it was made so personal. There is one obvious question: why did you not similarly personalize the story of any of the people who are actually suffering the most in Gaza, far more than either Shema Ahmed or Wafa Abouzadeh and Aboud Okal? One answer is obvious: Nobody other than Gaza terrorists has any access to them; indeed, for those who are not known to have been murdered yet, nobody other than those terrorists know whether they're still even alive. Yet no mention was even made of the suffering of the hostages, all of whom are suffering from inhumane treatment and far worse conditions than those you so sympathetically portrayed. There is also have another trait they have that those you highlighted almost certainly don't share: they are all innocent. Given that 98% of the Arabs polled in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority after the October 7 Massacre said they were more proud of being

This was published in the New London Day on March 11. We follow it by the original version submitted. The self-immolation of Aaron Bushnell was a tragedy, because that misguided individual never received the professional help he clearly needed. In his letter William Keating, "Death of serviceman Aaron Bushnell," compounds the tragedy by using it to promote a ceasefire in Gaza, likely viewing one, like many Americans, as a step toward peace. Hamas views ceasefires differently. During the ceasefire Hamas broke Oct. 7, Israel, sharing those American values, did its best to help the people in Gaza, under the mistaken impression Gazans would realize they would benefit more from peace than from continuing their genocidal struggle against Israelis and Jews around the world. Hamas used that ceasefire to expand its weapons arsenal, including tens of thousands of rockets and construct an extensive network of terror tunnels, strategically placed in civilian areas, particularly beneath h

Dear Editor: Reading about thousands of demonstrators in Cambridge calling for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza, I wonder how many of them realize a cease-fire means something very different to Hamas and the many other Palestinian Arab terror groups than it does for the rest of us. Most people look at a cease-fire as a way to end violence and move towards peace. For Hamas, a cease-fire is a way to better prepare itself to perpetuate even more horrendous terror attacks and kill more innocent people as it moves towards its goal of destroying America's only true friend in the Middle East, Israel, and killing more Jews around the world. Israelis would like nothing better than a real, permanent cease-fire, including the freeing of all the innocent people kidnapped by Hamas during the October 7 Massacre. But that massacre itself was a consequence of previous cease-fires, one of which was still in effect on the morning of October 7 until Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Fatah along with o

To the editor: If a temporary ceasefire in Gaza is the price of the release of the Israelis and others kidnapped by Hamas and other terrorists during their October 7 Massacre, that would be a positive, but would be the only positive associated with a ceasefire. The other consequences are all negative, indeed deadly. They include giving Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Fatah and the other terror groups in Gaza a respite, a chance to regroup, rearm and strengthen themselves, lengthening the war and bringing more more misery, death and destruction to both Gazans and Israelis. It would almost certainly involve Israel freeing terrorists, many of whom will go back to murdering innocent people. It would embolden Iran, the head of the snake, and terrorists around the globe. Prolonging the war in Gaza would also prolong the displacement of people in Lebanon and northern Israel, forced from their homes by the attacks by Hezbollah, which has honored binding UN Security Council Resolution 1701 in

Sent February 20 to the Los Angeles Times. Dear Editor: Irfan Galaria writes the opposite of reality. What he saw in Gaza was hell; that's what war is. What he left out was, using the terminology three college presidents used inappropriately but which could not be more appropriate here, is the context. The context is that the terrorists in  Gaza - Hamas, with the assistance of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Fatah and thousands of ordinary civilians - started a war by perpetuating the October 7 Massacre, the most brutal slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust. They made it clear there could be no peace unless they were destroyed. The context is that those terrorists turned just about every public facility in Gaza, including mosques, hospitals - perhaps they should be called Hamaspitals? - schools and homes, into their bases, storing rockets, rocket launchers and other arms. They built entrances to the tunnels below them. They had hospitals supply office space for their terrorists and util

Sent to The Independent on February 17. To the editor: Alan Rusbridger is right about October 7 not happening in a vacuum, but he's completely off base regarding the context. The relevant context includes the fanatical opposition by Hamas to the existence of Israel - not anything about Israel's actions, just its existence as a free, Western-style, non-Arab, non-Muslim multicultural democracy in the Middle East, and the way Hamas has spent the nearly two decades since its bloody coup in 2007 building its terror infrastructure, including arms, rockets, an immense underground network of tunnels. The relevant context includes misguided pressure put on Israel for a premature ceasefire every time Hamas started another war, allowing Hamas to regroup and rearm with the financial backing of Qater and an Iran enriched by a misguided nuclear agreement it has violated from the beginning. The relevant context includes sending massive amounts of aid to Gaza and looking the other way when mos