Editor:
Coverage of Israel’s war with Hamas has been endlessly frustrating, which is not surprising given the one-sided anti-Israel bias exhibited by most major newspapers during the past 40 years.
This portrayal of Israel as the Oppressor and Palestinians as the Oppressed has prompted the protesting on college campuses. How many of these protestors know about the Palestinian’s hateful charter with the stated purpose of eradicating the Jewish State and how many are aware of the numerous opportunities for peace that the Palestinians have managed to refuse since the end of the 1967 war initiated by the surrounding Arab states?
The Gazan death toll, while tragic for non-combatants, is derived from the untrustworthy Hamas Health Ministry and is always characterized as being mostly women and children, with no mention of the thousands of terrorist combatants included in the total. Israel has neutralized 18 of Hamas’ 24 battalions, a fact that never gets reported.
When will the first intrepid reporter reveal why there are women and children residing in homes that Israel targets as the sites from which rockets were launched or because they are the homes of Hamas operatives? Why aren’t the Hamas combatants making sure their families are residing elsewhere? Why aren’t they moving their families into the tunnels they’ve spent hundreds of millions of dollars intended for humanitarian purposes to build? Does Hamas require women and children to stay with their combatant husbands and sons?
The world needs to understand that Hamas’ stated strategy to end the Jewish state is to make Israel unlivable for Jews. Their tactic is constant and indiscriminate rocket fire into Israel and now, murderous infiltration. It is a known fact that Hamas fights while embedded in schools, hospitals, and homes.
Both Israel and Gaza will be better places without Hamas.
Jay Klebanoff
Virginia Beach
An edited version of this letter ran in The Virginian-Pilot.