Letter: Upset with Israel response

Dear Editor,

Over the holidays we’ve had the sickening spectacle of Israel wreaking large-scale destruction on Gaza, a poverty ghetto about twice the size of Washington, D.C., into which a million and a half people, more than half of them under the age of 17, are penned, unable to escape.

Hamas has criminally fired rockets into Israel, but Israel’s massively disproportionate military response compounds the crime many times over. This horrible overkill serves to underline the contradiction of a “war”

against terrorism.

After Sept. 11, 2001, the Bush administration promoted this monumentally bad idea, which seems to have been eagerly adopted by Israel’s right wing militarists. But civilians are the majority of casualties in all wars, and for them, war itself is a form of terrorism.

Many commentators agree that the present invasion will do nothing to further the cause of peace between the people of Israel and Palestine, that in fact it will do the opposite, further stoking the flames of fear and resentment on both sides.

The Gaza War also casts into glaring relief the shameful failure of our government to use its influence and power to act as a constructive agent for peace in the Mideast.

One hopes for better from incoming President Obama, who pledged to voters to restore America’s honor in the eyes of the world. It remains to be seen whether Obama will have the political will to seriously pursue peace for Palestine and Israel. Certainly our standing among civilized nations cannot rise to the status of honor while our tax dollars again, as too often in the past eight years, finance the massacre of innocents.

Tags: opinion, hudson, letter, israel, gaza, attacks