Readers React: As the bombs and rockets fall in Gaza and Israel

To the editor: At last! Someone finally had the courage to write this column, and The Times had the intellectual honesty to print it. (“Attacking Israel with the big lie: genocide,” Op-Ed, July 14)

As further proof, after a cease-fire was announced and Israel agreed to it, Hamas continued to fire rockets into Israel. However, Israel waited hours before retaliating.

What can be more conspicuous?

Gary M. Barnbaum, Woodland Hills

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To the editor: I rarely agree with columnist Jonah Goldberg, but he is right about the difference between the Israelis and the Palestinians. An Israeli official once said that “our highest priority is life, theirs is martyrdom.” There is no compromise in those positions.

But Goldberg is wrong when he cites people who think “George W. Bush was simultaneously an idiot and a criminal mastermind.”Anyone should know that Bush was an easily manipulated figurehead who didn’t have many original thoughts himself, criminal or otherwise.

Richard Kopelle, Los Angeles

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To the editor: Goldberg’s column on the complex issue of the Arab-Israeli conflict does not contain the words “occupation” and “illegal settlements.”

Why would he do that? Would it remind his readers that Israel attacked, conquered and now occupies what little Palestinian land remains?

Don Bustany, Studio City

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To the editor: Why does Hamas send hundreds of rockets into Israel when these attacks are so relatively ineffectual and nearly always prompt Israel to strike back disproportionately? And why is it that Israel strikes back with so much force, when that does not seem to limit Hamas’ rocket-firing capabilities?

The answer is politics.

By launching the rockets, Hamas prompts Israel to strike back, at which point it rattles its sabers and says to its people in the Gaza Strip that it is protecting them from a terrible military aggressor.

By retaliating forcefully, the ruling party in Israel can tell its people that the attacks will not go without a forceful response and that they can all rally around the flag against a radical faction.

All of which is politically advantageous. And disgraceful.

Peter Cohen, Rancho Palos Verdes

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