Puretz running out of Israeli talking points

Attacking Nagel 

Nagel’s latest anti-Semitic diatribe was so apparent in his “starving the children” letter to the editor. Nagel has an obsession with Jews as well as with Zionists (who are mostly Jewish). This is again revealed in his fantasy paragraph where he states that our government sits around and spouts Israeli talking points while collecting their hundreds of thousands in bribes from Zionist billionaires. 

My fantasy is thinking that if he had been present at the October 7, 2023 massacre at the Nova Music Festival he would support Israel’s aim of the war in Gaza, to wit to degrade Hamas. Get a life, Nagel (and maybe see a psychiatrist). Susan Puretz Saugerties

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My old letter writing friend, Susan Puretz, has run out of Israeli talking points. One doesn't have to be any particular religion to understand the purposeful starvation of tens of thousands can't be what God wants.

She maintains that Israel's extermination of the Palestinian people is all about "degrading" Hamas. Were the Nazi's just trying to degrade the Jews during the Second World War? Genocide is a special case, an extermination based on the vilest of racist impulses. The Third Reich committed genocide, and the Israeli state is doing the same. 

Just why is this apartheid state so generous with its campaign cash? Pat Ryan raked in $220,000 in donations from the Israel Lobby last year. He can't bring himself to even mention the tens of thousands of children roaming Gaza looking for a crust of bread. Kirsten Gillibrand got $480,000 from the Lobby in 2024. Has she ever referred to the suffering of two million Palestinians who are without food, water or shelter? 

Chuck Schumer, who calls himself Israel's "protector," sucked in $292,000 from the pro Israel Blackstone Group, and $236,000 from the Zionist Paul Weiss legal firm. All these Israeli "donations" can be verified at Opensecrets.org. Isn't it time we put an end to all of these Israeli bribes to our Congress?

Fred Nagel

Faith in Humanity

Regarding the letter to the editor by Susan Puretz “Attacking Fred Nagel” in last week’s issue of HV1 this is my response:

After reading Fred Nagel’s June 25th letter my faith in humanity was lifted somewhat by Fred’s obvious righteous indignation of the daily slaughter of innocent children and civilians being committed by Israel with the unswerving support of bought off US politicians as Fred asserted. Neither of these assertions are singularly his own speculations, but are facts on the record that can be looked up and verified. It has become a well known fact that AIPAC, the Israeli political action committee, mandates “pledges” from US politicians to be loyal to Israel or else AIPAC will finance campaigns against them upon their re-election bids with millions of dollars. This is exactly what happened to ex-congresswoman Cynthia McKinney and others who refused to be forced to sign any such pledges (https://ameu.org/2023/11/22/aipac-dark-money-and-the-assault-on- democracy/). Those that will sign these undemocratic pledges will be rewarded with financial support. This is what Fred was referring to and not a conspiracy theory invented by him as zionist/genocide supporter Susan Peretz insinuates in her attack letter.

Furthermore whether or not one was a witness or victim of the Oct. 7th Nova Music Festival massacre does not give one the right to commit war crimes and genocide against innocent children and civilians as Ms. Puretz seems to assert. I was initially horrified and shocked by what I saw happened at the music festival by roaming Hamas invaders, where 200 free spirited young Israeli attendees were unmercifully slaughtered. That being said I am even more horrified and shocked by tens of thousands of innocent Palestinian children being bombed, burned, denied medical care and now starved to death, which Fred was writing about and anyone with a conscience should be.

No Ms. Puretz, the slaughter that happened in one day at the music festival, as horrible as it was, does not compare with the ongoing slaughter/genocide happening to the Palestinian children, which has been happening for almost two years now. What has happened to our shared humanity that allows this zionist “work of darkness” to continue for this long unabated. Shame on anyone, especially US politicians, who support this genocide as Ms. Puretz’s factless letter apparently does. Genocide is not self defense and ethnic cleansing is a war crime no matter how you look at it. Ms. Puretz is the one who “needs to get a life” and stop supporting daily death en masse of innocent children, and me saying that is not anti-semitic, but pro life.

Steve Romine

Incomprehensible to the normal mind

The troops of the American 82nd Airborne Division were among the first to liberate Wöbbelin, a concentration camp northwest of Berlin. What they found that May 6, 1945 defied all notions of humanity. A US soldier predicted that the camps “will stand for all time as one of history’s most gruesome symbols of inhumanity. There our troops found sights, sounds and stenches horrible beyond belief, cruelties so enormous as to be incomprehensible to the normal mind."

In Wobbelin, as in some other concentration camps, US troops decided to show ordinary Germans from the surrounding villages what they had done. The townspeople were forced to view the corpses, bury hundreds of bodies and attend their funerals. Pictures of Germans show them holding scarves over their noses as they looked at the dead bodies.

A few Germans were indignant, insisting that they hadn't known what was going on in the camps. And speaking out against Hitler or the Third Reich almost always resulted in the death penalty. What was a good German citizen to do? Most townspeople, however, walked through the camps in shock and disbelief.

The slaughter of Jews and Romany had accelerated in the final months of the WW II. Dachau in southern Germany saw between 2,600 and 4,000 inmates die of disease and starvation each month. That's roughly 100 every day, about the same death rate of Palestinians in Gaza.

Are Americans more aware of the Palestinian genocide than German citizens were of the Holocaust? There has been no blackout of news coverage and pictures of starving Palestinian children. Moreover, criticism of Israel's war crimes is not a capital offense. So far, we still have our First Amendment freedom of speech.

So what is our excuse for arming and supporting the murderous Israeli death machine? Will we be taken some day through the killing fields of Gaza with our handkerchiefs over our noses? We already know what a good American citizen should be doing.   

Fred Nagel

To the Edtor:

Our letter in the June/July 2025 issue of this magazine, “How to Ardently Resist U.S. support for Israel’s Crimes” suggests some ways to keep one’s taxes from being used for military aid to Israel. One way was not pay that portion of one’s federal income taxes that is used for that purpose. Since then, we have learned that after due process the IRS can just take such underpayments, plus penalties and interest, from one’s bank account without one’s permission. So we no longer recommend this method.

A better, totally legal method is to minimize one’s taxable income, thus reducing the tax due and the funds available for military aid to Israel. One way to reduce taxable income is to increase charitable contributions so that itemized deductions exceed the standard deduction as much as possible. (We estimate that doing this will reduce our 2025 federal tax liability 54% and our New York State tax liability 100%.) By contributing to tax-exempt Palestinian charities like UNRWA USA one can kill two birds with one stone: less money available for killing Palestinians and rendering them homeless, and more to help them by offsetting cuts in U.S. aid. Putting our money where our mouths are, we are greatly increasing our 2025 contributions to the AET Library Endowment associated with this fine magazine, to UNRWA USA, and to several other 501(C)(3) charities. To help the Palestinians and significantly impact U.S. polices, many people need to join this effort, give generously, and spread the word. So please give as much as you can to your favorite 501(C)(3) charities, especially those dedicated to the welfare of the horrifically downtrodden Palestinians. And remember to divest from U.S. Treasury securities. Time is running out fast for the Palestinians. History and providence will smile upon those who gave all they could to save them.

Gregory and Nancy De Sylva 

Representative Ryan:

I was horrified to see that you voted with Republicans to express gratitude to ICE and to urge stronger cooperation between ICE and local government.
 
You live in a community that includes many immigrant families--our neighbors, friends, co-workers, employees--who are now in danger of summary detention and deportation. Parents live in constant fear of ICE appearing at their homes, their workplaces, on the street. Children have nightmares about their parents being taken away.
 
The only thing mitigating the anxiety that these families endure is the knowledge that Ulster County is generally welcoming to immigrants, regardless of status--a position that you once endorsed as county executive. Police will not do ICE’s dirty work. School districts are staunch in their protection of their students.
 
Perhaps it was the “antisemitism” aspect of this House resolution that particularly appealed to you—you’d like to see ICE abduct and deport more protesters under the totally specious argument that protesting genocide is antisemitic. What would you say to the courageous Israelis who are now standing up and declaring horror over the atrocities committed by the IDF, with the full material support of the US?
 
At this point in history, the old labels—antisemitism, anti-Zionist, pro-Israel, anti-Israel, etc –are irrelevant. You are either pro-genocide or anti-genocide.
 
It is unbearable to know that I am represented in Congress by someone who supports both genocide and the brutality of ICE.

Jo Salas

Dear Editor:

It's great Josh Riley and Pat Ryan voted for a resolution condemning antisemitism.  It would be  less hypocritical if they also voted to quit funding Israel's genocide against the SEMITIC people of Gaza.  Indigenous Palestinians are at least as "Semitic" as the western settlers in Israel, who are granted citizenship with the flimsiest connection to Judaism. These immigrants are major drivers of far right Zionist settler colonialism, which hides behind Judaism in it's naked quest for "lebensraum".  Israel's obvious ethnic cleansing and takeover of Gaza is fueling Jewish antisemitism world wide.  How many eyes for an eye are enough? Many  Zionists openly call for exterminating ALL Gazans, not just Hamas.

By conflating protest against the Gaza massacre and boycott of the Zionist state with

antisemitism, our constitutional freedoms are being criminalized.  Today the Palestinian freedom movement; tomorrow the climate justice, women's, civil rights, LGTBQ+ movements, and any speech our rulers don't like. Indeed some very bad actors like Trump, who called Neo-Nazi rioters in Charlottesville (August 2017) "very fine people", the Heritage Foundation (Project 2025), and Christian Nationalists, are all onboard with weaponizing antisemitism to silence liberal education, including progressive Jewish voices, while stoking actual antisemitism, as in demonizing Jewish "elitists" like George Soros.

Following the horrific police murder of George Floyd and so many others (Monica Goods locally), Wrong wingers countered  "Black Lives Matter" with "All Lives Matter".  Wouldn't it be awesome if all Semites, indeed all people mattered? Or are some Semites just chopped liver?

Edmund

Some Sort of Perspective

How can we put America's starvation of Gaza in some sort of perspective? Do we write songs about it? Do we hold up signs? How do we get beyond what our country is capable of doing? Has it always been that way and we didn't notice?

The pictures are already upon us. The skeletal bodies and shrunken eyes. There are 90,000 children under imminent threat of starvation. The trucks are only a few miles away, but Israel, backed by its partner in crime, the United States, has decided not to let them through.

Do you think we live in a humane society? That we follow some sort of moral code? Do we believe in a God that doesn't slaughter children? How did we end up in a country that always puts money and power before its basic humanity?

We the people forced an end to our invasion and occupation of Vietnam. Not in time to save the lives of 58,000 US troops and over two million Vietnamese people. We worked at it, defying the police and the college administrators that kept telling us to shut up and be patriotic. It turned out that the war resisters were the patriots. Those in power were the liars and the murderers.

Today, we must overcome the apartheid state of Israel, a toxic mixture of religious fanaticism and wanton cruelty. We must end our support of this genocide against the Palestinian people. The battle is for the soul of our democracy, just as it was in Vietnam.

Fred