Disagreement about Gaza

Re “Self-defense vs. slaughter,” Opinion, March 8

Tim Rutten’s writings have made me grateful that he is a columnist for The Times, so I regret that his column on Gaza is one with which I cannot agree. More than 100 Palestinians in Gaza were injured or killed, while three people were killed in Israel by Hamas rocket fire in this latest struggle. The number of Palestinians killed in these battles over the years far outnumbers Israelis killed. In democratic elections in Gaza, Hamas won over Fatah and should, at the least, be seated at the table with the United States and Fatah if we genuinely believe in real democratic elections.

Both Palestinians and Israelis, as the well-known Israeli writer Amos Oz has pointed out, are the sad victims of these struggles.

Ann Maupin

Los Angeles

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Rutten asks: “If a faction of Mexican terrorists was holed up in the barrios of Tijuana firing rockets into San Diego, does anyone doubt Baja California would be swarming with Marines -- or that any president who didn’t send them there would be impeached?” I ask: If Rutten lived his entire life in a squalid refugee camp in Death Valley, and was pushed out of his home by Mexicans claiming the California coast was their ancestral homeland, and were backed by high-tech weaponry and billions of dollars from a superpower, would he feel the same about the Palestinian-Israeli issue?

Joe Floyd

Redondo Beach