To the editor: The firestorm on Sunday upon a Palestinian refugee camp in Rafah was a “tragic accident,” according to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Israel says the attack killed two Hamas leaders hiding near the refugees.
It’s the same old story. Hamas terrorists embed themselves among Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip. Israel kills dozens of noncombatants in the hopes of destroying a few Hamas outposts. The world reacts in horror at the slaughter of innocents.
This escalating cycle of violence makes perfect sense to the Hamas propaganda campaign, using innocents as pawns for their political purposes. It also makes sense to Netanyahu supporters who show no pity toward Palestinian residents.
Peace can only come when both the Hamas leaders and members of the Netanyahu regime are renounced and imprisoned. Only then can the innocents of Palestine and Israel reconcile with each other as neighborly children of God, equally the victims of God’s enemies.
David Glidden, Riverside
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To the editor: These days it’s becoming hard to tell who really is the chief executive of the United States.
Our president draws “red lines” for a dependent foreign country, and the leader of that country derisively rejects those red lines and continues to inflict mass death and destruction using armaments gifted to him by our president and paid for by our tax dollars.
Not only does our president look the other way helplessly; our House speaker invites the foreign leader to address Congress.
The American people want to know if our country is in reality being led by our elected chief executive, or by a criminally indicted, recalcitrant chief executive of a dependent foreign country.
Saif M. Hussain, Woodland Hills
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To the editor: Any civilian casualty in war is tragic — those in Rafah recently, those in Israel on Oct. 7, and those in Dresden, Germany, in 1945.
Should we have not bombed Dresden? Or Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
I am the Jewish daughter and granddaughter of Holocaust survivors and a proud supporter of Israel, my people’s homeland. I am also no fan of Netanyahu.
Still, I have to ask, why is Israel the only nation on Earth expected to secure the rights and safety of the adversary that savagely attacked it?
This travesty would end immediately if Hamas would surrender, stop launching rockets into Israel and return the Israeli civilians they kidnapped on Oct. 7. Then legitimate leadership could be elected in Gaza that could ensure Palestinian civilians could thrive peacefully in their land.
Jane Drucker, Studio City
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To the editor: Tragic mistakes, investigations, clarification, condemnations, regrets, accountability and finger pointing — hollow words and actions, none of which will bring back the children blown to pieces.
Cease-fire, please.
Susan Straughn Harris, Woodland Hills
