Matters Of Fact

Sent to the Boston Globe March 28, 2026 Dear Editor: Substantial and virtually inexplicable omissions in the article "Hezbollah vows to keep its weapons after Israeli strikes" create a highly distorted picture. They begin with the very headline, which omits the facts that Hezbollah has repeatedly insisted it will never disarm and the Israeli strikes were in response to continual Hezbollah attacks in violation of the so-called ceasefire. Also omitted is the fact that Hezbollah having any weapons violates Lebanese sovereignty, previous ceasefire agreements and United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, passed two decades ago. The article mentions a statistic about the number of people allegedly killed in Lebanon but fails to mention reliable evidence indicates almost all those killed were terrorist, with very few civilian casualties. As usual, the article also fails to mention that Hezbollah is a genocidal terrorist organization. Sincerely, Alan Stein

  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...

Sent to the Boston Globe August 31, 2025 To the editor: Hamas is a barbaric terrorist organization known to spread false information, exemplified when, barely ten days after it led that barbaric October 7 slaughter and just minutes after an Islamic Jihad rocket hit a nearly deserted parking lot near the Al Ahli hospital Hamas spread the lie that Israel struck the hospital itself and killed move than 500 people. International media spread that lie without bothering to check and barely bothered to correct it when the truth was made obvious. That pattern has continued for the nearly two years since Hamas started the current war. Israel is a democracy that does its best to investigate before commenting on the almost always false accusations of Hamas and its minions. Yet the media routinely treats whatever Hamas says as if it's true, often not even mentioning the source was Hamas, while gratuitously creating doubt about whatever Israel says. This perverse double standard reached new hei...

Submitted to the Boston Globe August 25, 2025 To the editor: Thinking about the recent editorial lamenting the skyrocketing antisemitism and the constant bombardment of newspaper articles that read as if they were produced by the Ministry of Disinformation of the Hamas terrorists, I realized the connection was something worthy of investigation by the Boston Globe's prestigious Spotlight team. The team might investigate how often - basically, almost never - the articles blaming Israel for the devastation in Gaza that has been part of Hamas' strategy mention that all the statistics in the stories originate with Hamas, hardly a paragon of truth, and are propagated by UNRWA or other United Nations organizations that are effectively in cahoots with Hamas. It might also investigate the consequences of the newspapers publishing articles about Gaza never seem to mention that all the reporters in Gaza are either members of Hamas, supporters of Hamas, or afraid of reporting objectively b...

Submitted to The New York Times August 16, 2025 Dear Editor: I find Nicholas Kristof's answers to his critics about his unfair criticisms about Israel's defensive war necessitated by Hamas' barbaric October 7 slaughter unconvincing. He fails to acknowledge that all the suffering in Gaza is part of Hamas' cruel strategy and that Israel is far more interested in the welfare of whatever innocent civilians live in Gaza than is Hamas, which actually has no interest in their welfare, and when Hamas uses homes, schools, mosques, hospitals and United Nations facilities as bases, it's impossible for Israel to defend its own people without massive destruction of what should be civilian areas. Also, like every critic of Israel I've read, he utterly fails to make a single constructive suggestion. I'm still waiting to hear a critic propose something that hasn't already been tried and failed or pretty obviously would actually lead to more death and destruction in the ...

Submitted to The New York Times July 20, 2025 Dear Editor: There's one inescapable conclusion sensible people must draw from Omer Bartov's commentary "I'm a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It." The conclusion is Bartov is not qualified to teach about genocide. Israel continues to defend itself from the barbaric October 7 attack by an avowedly genocidal terrorist organization, an organization backed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, which is not shy about calling for the destruction of Israel. In defending itself, Israel has taken more steps to avoid harming civilians - civilians strategically used as human shields by Hamas - than any other army in history, so much so that military leaders from other countries have visited Israel to learn what it does to minimize harm to civilians. They generally conclude they would not go as far as Israel does because they wouldn't be willing to increase the risk to their soldiers to protect enemy civilians the way Israe...

Submitted to the Boston Globe July 19, 2025 Dear Editor: The Druze in Syria are getting slaughtered by Bedouin as well as forces from the Syrian army. Israel acts to save them, while having to protect itself from attacks on seven fronts. Yet the Boston  Globe calls it "Israel's aggression." Why? Meanwhile, the Boston Globe recently editorialized about and lamented the massive increase in acts of antisemitism, apparently unaware of how its biased coverage of the war being waged against the world's only Jewish state has contributed to this wave. Very strange. Sincerely, Alan Stein

Submitted to the New London Day July 13, 2025 Dear Editor: The U.S. should agree to the condition Iran demands in order to resume nuclear talks, i.e. a guarantee of no further attacks, with the slight modification that we will not attack unless Iran again forces us to attack. We should simply specify that any resumption of its nuclear weapons program, its missile program, its funding of terror proxies or its transfer of weapons to its proxies or allies waging war against democracies would constitute such forcing misbehavior. We tried to negotiate with Iran for years while it continued its malign, murderous behavior and sped up its nuclear weapons program; we should not let Iran again play us for a naive nation of fools. Sincerely, Alan Stein Natick, Massachusetts The writer, formerly a long-time resident of Connecticut, is President Emeritus of PRIMER-Connecticut (Promoting Responsibility In Middle East Reporting) and founder of PRIMER-Massachusetts and PRIMER-Israel. 

Submitted to the Wall Street Journal July 10, 2025 Dear Editor: Mahmoud Jabari's commentary, "A Hebron 'Emirate' or a Colonial Deception?" made abundant use of one of the few truthful statements he wrote, "The most dangerous lies are those wrapped in familiar clothing." He falsely wrote that the PLO "recognized Israel’s right to exist in 1993." This is contradicted not only by the fact that, despite a charade orchestrated in Gaza in 1996, the PLO's charter continues to call for the destruction of Israel, but also by Arafat's successor as PLO chair, Mahmoud Abbas, who has repeatedly asserted he will never recognize Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people. Since the essence of Israel is precisely its status as the nation state of the Jewish people, to deny Israel's Jewish character is to deny Israel's right to exist. This is only the most prominent lie in a commentary reeking with dangerous lies wrapped in familiar clothin...

Submitted to the Boston Globe, July 9, 2025 Dear Editor: The July 8 editorial "Gaza’s suffering needs to end" pays far too little attention to the one essential first step necessary to end that suffering, all of which is courtesy of Hamas: the total elimination of Hamas, as correctly observed by President Biden less than a week after Hamas, with the help of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Fatah, other terror groups and thousands of ordinary Gaza civilians, perpetuated its barbaric October 7 slaughter. Without the permanent elimination of Hamas, any diminution of the suffering in Gaza will be temporary and the long term suffering will be far greater. Thanks to the steps Israel was forced to take  - most of which were heavily criticized by the Boston Globe - in the aftermath of those Hamas atrocities, the people of Gaza now have an opportunity to live normal lives, Iran's terror proxies have been tremendously weakened and the danger of a nuclear-armed Iran has been greatly decre...

 Dear Editor: Despite the slant injected into the July 3 article "Hamas, Israel fall short of accepting cease-fire proposal," if one actually reads the article it's clear that while Hamas rejected the American proposal, Israel accepted it. This is despite the fact that the unjust and one-sided proposal would have guaranteed half the remaining Israeli civilians not already murdered by Hamas would have to endure at least another 60 days of brutality and torture, while an additional undisclosed but clearly large number of Hamas terrorists, including mass murderers, would be freed. Israel, of course, reiterated President Biden's position in the aftermath of Hamas' October 7 attack, that ultimately all the hostages kidnaped by Hamas must be freed and Hamas must never be in a position to repeat its atrocities, but that doesn't change the facts that Israel accepted the proposal while Hamas rejected it. The headline should have reflected those facts, rather than propa...

Dear Editor: Thanks to Israel bypassing Hamas to provide humanitarian assistance directly to the people in Gaza - rather than going through organizations such as UNRWA that essentially let Hamas steal almost all the aid, and thanks to Israel virtually destroying Iran's terror proxies and, with America's help, destroying much if not all of Iran's nuclear weapons program, the world has a golden opportunity. The people in Gaza have a chance to throw off the yoke of Hamas, a prerequisite for rebuilding Gaza and turning it into a place where people can live normal lives for the first time since Israel withdrew in 2005. The world has a chance to free itself permanently from the horrendous danger of a nuclear Islamic Republic. We should not neglect this opportunity. We need to support Israel as it works to free Gaza from Hamas' death grip. And we need to prevent Iran from rebuilding its nuclear weapons program as well as its deadly missile arsenal, either compelling Iran to ab...

Regarding The Post's editorial on the Arab plan for Gaza, it is essential that any plan for the region's future ensure Hamas is effectively eliminated, completely disarmed and unable to play any role, whether military or political, in the governance of Gaza. Any plan lacking that element would simply repeat the errors of the past that led to Oct. 7, 2023, and the current devastation in Gaza, thus satisfying the definition of insanity often attributed to Albert Einstein: doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. The Arab plan does nothing to guarantee Hamas's elimination and definitely should not be taken seriously.
 Alan Stein, Natick Massachusetts Published in the Washington Post on March 29, 2025

 Dear Editor: The article "Trump issues warning to Hamas; Group demands permanent truce" (Boston Globe, March 7, 2025) fails to mention that for Hamas, the meaning of a "permanent truce" is very different from our understanding. For Hamas, a "permanent truce" is meant to last only until Hamas decides to violate it, as it has violated every previous truce, including countless violations of the current ceasefire which involves the release of a handful of the innocent hostages being held by Hamas in blatant violation of international law in exchange for the release of hundreds of violent terrorists, including numerous mass murderers. Sincerely, Alan Stein   Sent to the Boston Globe on March 7, 2025

 Dear Editor: In his letter "Resettlement and Violence Go Hand in Hand" (The Day, March 7,2025), Kevin Munday may be correct, but he leaves out the most salient result of most resettlements, peace. Whatever violence occurred during most resettlements after war, including the transfer of ethnic Germans to Germany after World War II and the exchange of populations between India and Pakistan about the same time six Arab armies invaded Israel with the intent of destroying it and "driving all the Jews into the sea" but instead causing the displacement of 400,000-700,000 of their brethren, who had not yet adopted their new identity as "Palestinian," those displacements actually saved lives and were critically in bringing about peace. President Trump put forth the only proposal that hasn't essentially been a rehash of previous failed ones. It should be given serious consideration. Sincerely, Alan Stein Sent to the New London Day on March 7, 2025