Letters to the editor
Readers respond
Community must reject Trump’s calls to hate
I hope that our community is as distressed, repulsed and appalled as I am to hear Donald Trump referencing the infusion of immigrants as “poisoning the blood of our country” (“Trump denies plagiarizing Hitler with ‘poisoning blood’ phrase,” online, Dec. 22; this issue Page 9). That phrase mirrors what the former president said when he began his campaign for the Republican nomination for president in 2015, asserting that Mexican immigrants are drug dealers, criminals and rapists. It plays well with the members of mobs who attend Trump rallies and cheer anything he says.
As the White House and others have pointed out, Trump’s anti-immigrant words are precisely the type of rhetoric that was used by Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, and Trump surely knows that. It is a perfect fit for a man who has expressed his admiration for ruthless, brutal dictators of history.
The former president plays into what many participants in the dark recesses of internet social media are saying, and it is what inspired the savage who took the lives of 11 of our valued and beloved community members in the Tree of Life building.
If we are ever going to be able address the repugnant antisemitic and anti-immigrant fervor which rages in the United States today, we must entrust our votes to individuals who will lead with decency, tolerance and concern for all. Donald Trump is not, has never been and never will be such a person. His never-ending drive to divide us and to cause us to hate those who are not like us is a disgrace.
Oren Spiegler
Peters Township
Biden not deserving of our votes
Your Dec. 15 article “Biden’s Chanukah party centers on the Oct. 7 massacre” speaks of Biden’s unshakable commitment to Israel. Joe Biden has spent more than 40 years applying pressure tactics to Israel, and this time is no different. It is Biden’s financial support to Iran as well as relaxation of sanctions that provided necessary funding to Hamas. Three years ago, Iran was close to being bankrupt. Today, and thanks to Biden’s relaxation of sanctions, Iran is flush with oil revenue of around $60 billion, which it uses to fund terrorism. This would have never happened under the prior administration, not to mention the several hundred million paid to the Palestinian Authority.
President Biden is responsible for the Hamas attacks, and he, as well as Democratic members of Congress who refuse to support the $14 billion stand-alone funding to Israel, do not deserve our vote.
Frank Dreifuss
Mt. Lebanon
Cause of war omitted in letter supporting cease-fire
The letter written by Jared Magnani exists in an alternate universe in which there are only effects but never a cause. (“Continuation of Israel-Hamas war is ‘immoral,’” Dec. 22).
On Oct. 7, in a surprise attack that violated an existing cease-fire, Hamas and its many willing Gazan executioners murdered, raped, beheaded, eviscerated, disemboweled, sliced off breasts and machine-gunned (as was done at Babi Yar) more than 1,200 Jews. This is the cause Mr. Magnani is unable to enunciate or call out in his letter.
In a nearly identical fashion, the surprise attack by Imperial Japan at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, in which 2,300 people were murdered, was the cause of the United States’ entry into World War II. When Imperial Japan refused to accept an unconditional surrender, the United States and its allies killed between 500,000 and 1 million Japanese civilians.
Since Hamas has refused an unconditional surrender, Israel is proceeding as the United States did in the Pacific after Pearl Harbor.
Notwithstanding Mr. Magnani’s letter’s alternate universe, before effects, there are causes.
To put it in the vernacular that most cultures understand: Don’t start something that you can’t finish.
Richard Sherman
Margate, Florida
It is Hamas who should surrender
Responding to Jared Magnani’s letter to the editor (“Continuation of Israel-Hamas war is ‘immoral,’” Dec. 22), I suppose that one death is too many, and that after Oct. 7, Israel could have decided that conditions were too dangerous for Gaza’s citizens to go to war and relied instead on asking the U.N. to pass a resolution condemning Hamas (something the U.N. has so far failed to do). Israel could have just left Hamas in place to carry out more raids, a threat its leaders have repeatedly made. Israel could also have saved lives by retaliating proportionately, by sending barbaric gangs into Gaza to behead, rape, gouge eyes from living prisoners, eviscerate pregnant women, burn whole families alive and kidnap as many Palestinians as they could and then call it a day.
You will not be able to find any Israeli who would carry out these atrocities. The cultural difference between Hamas, and the Palestinians who resoundingly support it, and Israelis tells us Israel cannot live next to this barbarity without erasing the capability to carry out more raids; otherwise, Israel’s neighbors would smell weakness and Israel’s days would be numbered. Every civilian death in Gaza is caused by Hamas. Hamas, not Israel, should surrender.
Larry Shapiro
Calgary, Alberta
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