To the Editor,

Linda Peterson’s article of October 26, 2023 entitled, “Midnight musings about Gaza” is uniformed and biased.

She tries to create a moral equivalency between Israel and Gaza by stating, “Any type of war is worrisome….” but there is no moral equivalency between a terrorist organization and a democracy. She ignores the fact the responsibility for what is happening in Gaza belongs to the people who started this war, not those seeking to defend themselves. A poll indicates that 70% of Gazans support Hamas and they elected them to power. The butchers who started this war and slaughtered entire families on October 7, and raped, tortured and maimed the living and desecrated the corpses of the murdered were not only Hamas, but thousands of ordinary Gazans who enthusiastically joined them. Tens of thousands of jihadists have joined the Hamas military. Tens of thousands of “ordinary Palestinians” have participated in riots against Israel. Their national identity is based on the denial of the humanity and rights of Jews to exist. Palestine has taken millions of dollars of “aid” and used it to build concrete-enforced tunnels to further its mission against the annihilation of Israel, not to build infrastructure for its citizenry.

Does Ms. Petersen’s “heart ache” for the Palestinians who danced around the trucks carrying the abducted men, women and children yelling, “Death to the Jews!” while helping Hamas hide them? Or the mothers of ordinary Palestinians who proclaim they are proud to turn their children into martyrs by killing Jews? Or the ordinary Palestinian teachers who teach their students from printed textbooks that it is a heroic and religious obligation to kill Jews? Or the ordinary Palestinians who help hide rockets and weapons for the destruction of the Jews? Ms. Petersen’s soft sentiments for fully participatory Palestinians meant to engender sympathy are misguided. She discussed “possibly lethal situations” that she apparently learned about on “television news channels” and failed to mention the actual murders of Israelis perpetrated by Palestinian terrorists. I might suggest she change channels or use the internet to inform herself what is actually happening.

She is factually wrong that the “level of destruction” is “unprecedented.” I would direct her attention, for example, to the Allies bombing Dresden on February 13, 14, 15, 1945.

A blockade of Gaza’s electricity and fuel is legal and justified under international law in the war that Hamas started and is not the collective punishment that Ms. Petersen implies. Limiting the flow of resources into Gaza is legal warfare meant to impair the enemy’s military capabilities and exert pressure on Hamas to release Israeli (and other countries’) hostages. There is no mention of Israel warning the civilians of Gaza to flee, or Egypt outrageously sealing its border with Gaza and preventing hundreds of thousands of civilians from seeking safety, or Hamas cruelly blocking the roads so that civilians cannot flee so they can continue to use them for human shields; this is a violation of international law. This is contrary to what dozens of countries have done in response to recent world conflicts.

Hamas is the cause of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza that is apparently keeping Ms. Petersen awake at night. Hamas has the food and fuel she is worried about but is using it to support its underground tunnel system and rockets, instead of supplying basic commodities to the civilian population. Hamas uses Gaza’s water pipes to make rockets and there is still an aquifer under Gaza which is available to its inhabitants. Hamas fights its wars with both terror and its public relations arm which disseminates misinformation. Unfortunately, Hamas’ lies are apparently accepted without proper fact checking.

Ms. Petersen laments her “guilt over not doing something to stop these atrocities.” She could start by using her position in the news media to disseminate accurate information.

Jodi M. Gladstone, M.Ed., Esq.

Cranston