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

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...

 Dear Editor: I had to laugh at Naim Qassem, the head of the Hezbollah terrorist group, saying Israeli troops had to withdraw from Lebanese territory in full by February 18. Under binding United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, passed in 2006, Hezbollah had to withdraw from any part of Lebanon south of the Litani River and be disarmed. This was a followup to United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559, adopted in 2004, calling for the disarmament of Hezbollah and all the other terror groups and militias in Lebanon. According to the article "Hezbollah chief: Israel must fully withdraw from Lebanon by Feb. 18" (MetroWest Daily News, February 17),  Qassem said Israel "had 'no pretext' to maintain a military presence in any post in southern Lebanon." Perhaps Qassem should look in a mirror. Hezbollah has had no pretext to maintain its presence as a terrorist army anywhere in Lebanon since 2004, and if Hezbollah wasn't there and constantly attacki...

Dear editor: On July 27, Hezbollah launched an Iranian-supplied rocket from southern Lebanon, murdering 12 children and teenagers playing soccer in the Israeli town of Majdal Shams. According to the August 3 article, "Hezbollah forces resume steady rocket, artillery fire against Israel," UNIFIL, the United Nations "peacekeeping force" in Lebanon, told Reuters it "had not investigated the incident" because the Israeli town "is outside its mandated area of operation. The rocket was fired from the Lebanese town of Chebaa. Like thousands of other rockets Hezbollah has fired at Israel since October 7, it was fired from south of the Litani River. UNIFIL was expanded and strengthened after the war Hezbollah started in 2006 and given the mandate to ensure no armed militias, including Hezbollah, had any presence south of the Litani River in southern Lebanon. This was to be a prelude to the official Lebanese army being the only armed force in all of Lebanon. To...

To the editor: I am distressed by what was revealed by Bernie Sanders' op-ed, "No more US complicity with Netanyahu's war machine in Gaza." It revealed that a long-time United States Senator could be incredibly ignorant. Putting aside the fact that Israel currently has but one brigade in Gaza, which hardly comprises a "war machine," it's not Netanyahu's war and it's not against the Palestinian Arab people. The Israeli army has been doing what a united Israeli public demands, knowing that not succeeding in what President Biden himself acknowledged must be done - destroying Hamas - would be a disaster for Israel. An not just for Israel. If Israel doesn't succeed in destroying Hamas, it will be a disaster for America and for the entire democratic world, a disaster which might be impossible to overcome. Israel is fighting a just and necessary war against evil and, contrary to the misinformation spread by Sanders, it is fighting it in a highly mor...