Letter to the New York Times

The choice to publish Stephens's opinion piece on the use of the word "genocide" to descrbe Israel's actions in Gaza takes the Times further down the road of complicity in the unfolding horrors. The majority of scholars, almost all human rights and humanitarian organizations and the overwhelming majority of people -- especially those living in the global south -- know that Palestinians are being slaughtered "as such," as the definition of the word "genocide" requires. The only reasonable explanation for the deliberate targeting of children with bullets to the head or torso by Israeli snipers is the belief by the officers who instruct them on targeting that Gazan children are all just immature terrorists who "deserve" extermination. That sounds like killing Palestinians "as such" regardless of their individual beliefs or actions. Yes, this is a genocide and your publication is complicit in its execution.

Dick

From Ruth--

"It needs to be repeated that this is the first genocide that has happened on our phones.  It needs to be repeated that we are capable of watching something for two years without seeing it.  It needs to be repeated that even when we have dimly registered the scale of destruction in Gaza, we have not been able to stop it with protests or with boycotts or with letters to the government.  We will continue to protest and to boycott and to send letters to the government.  It needs to be repeated that an entire population is on the brink of starvation and we know this but can't get the food past the blockade.  It needs to be repeated that our country is deeply implicated in the destruction of Gaza and this weighs on everyone's psyche, especially because it is so often denied, especially because history is repeating itself."...undesignated author

Just this morning, in speaking with my friend about Palestine, the topic of insufficient words came up.  She said, "How is it possible to not hear the ripple of screams?  They are heard throughout the world."  I am not minimizing our relationship with this endless Palestinian struggle:  we are constantly, repeatedly, making our best attempt to end this gut-wrenching suffering, this constant barrage of humiliation that has been perpetrated against the Palestinian people.  But we are here in our protected - for now - part of the world, many of us because of the skin we were born in. Our determination to use our privilege for the change of world policy is rooted in solidarity. Our repetition, however creative and determined, has grown insufficient.

"We need new words.  The scale of it, the cheek of it...brazen, scandalous, outrageous, immoral... the words scatter to the ground and smash.  They fall pathetically short.

"There is a violent disregard for Palestinian life that is ideologically underpinned; but always changing, always "improving" its methods, gathering technological and geopolitical impetus while the victim remains locked in the cruel experiment and has no right of reply."

....Max Porter, 11/20/24 - "Edward Said & The Question of Palestine," Palestine Festival of Literature

Much as we demand the right for Palestine to live, its people to breathe free, its children to be joyful in learning and in play, I believe we are among a minority who have deliberately NOT turned away from the enormity of this destruction and tragic loss. We have allowed ourselves to have our own hearts burst with the murderous acts of the IDF and the deaf ears and hollow hearts of our government's policies. (Honestly, it should be becoming clearer to all that  the two are inseparable). We have not turned away.

Max Porter describes the devastation of Palestine as "psychopathic violence, not merely a savagely disproportionate response". We hear it in the crassly racial insults of settler occupiers and their defenders, the IOF.  How many more will commit the act of "un-aliving" the defenseless before turning their hatred on themselves?

                                                ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"We will spend the night under this tree on the corner by the gate if we have to.  We can never be made to leave this land.  It is our home."  - Jerusalem tour guide

"The task for the Palestinian people is to assure its presence on the land.  There is no other acceptable alternative." - Edward Said

For us, everything we do, speak, write and see brings us to Palestine and its people.

As words fail us, evermore does our solidarity endure.

FREE! FREE! PALESTINE

Made in America Blood Bath

Does every global atrocity eventually become yesterday's story? And from there do they shamefully creep into our history books? We are responsible for up to 17,000 children who have been slaughtered, bombed, and starved to death by the best weaponry that the world has ever seen. Everyone has a role to play. The 2,000 bombs are made by General Dynamics and the drones made by Northrop Grumman. In fact it's a made in America bloodbath; how long can people bear keeping that in their minds?

Life is often hard in this land of the free, with the very rich gobbling up most of our country's profits. The greedier the billionaires get, the more they plot to rob us of what we still have left: our healthcare, public education and Social Security. We got rid of the thieving Democrats, only to be plagued by the new fascist party led by a madman. It is no wonder so many of us are in the streets.

But our county is also remaking itself, from the defender of liberty to the merchant of genocide. What is worth saving when we are responsible for slaughtering tens of thousands of Palestinians? We are transforming ourselves into the apocalypse of death and all the world is witness.

Almost every member of Congress gets piles of money from the Israel Lobby (opensecrets.org). Ask your House and Senate members just how much cash they are paid each year to look the other way. Our venal Congress is obsessed with blood money, and will never end the carnage on its own. That's were you come in. Demand that Israel and the US end the holocaust of the Palestinian people.  

Fred Nagel

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