descendants and relatives, condemning Israel’s military operation in Gaza and accusing it of “ongoing genocide.” (See brief page 18.)
Forgetting, for a moment, the background of the people involved in this group, it is irresponsible, insensitive and reckless to use the crime of the Holocaust in this way. How can one compare a nation’s right of defending their citizens with the systematic, targeted, wholesale murder of an innocent people?
As it has been said many times, if the Palestinians would put down their weapons there would be peace, but if the Israelis put down their weapons then there would be wholesale slaughter. The people in Gaza elected Hamas so they are, at the least, tacitly behind the rocket attacks that precipitated this war.
Secondly, to come out as a Holocaust survivor group and thus dilute the immense tragedy of that time with twisted moral equivalency, somehow comparing what happened to my innocent relatives who were demeaned, brutally abused, and annihilated with a legitimate dually elected government simply trying to protect its citizens is spurious at the least but really egregious.
This is especially in light of the fact that it is taught in Palestinian schools that the Holocaust never happened and the supposed moderate leader Abbas has a Ph.D. in Holocaust denial.
Rabbi Dr. Bernhard Rosenberg
Edison, N.J.
Both sides suffer
The latest issue of The Chronicle features a picture of an Arab child before a bombed building in Gaza. Everybody, except for Hamas, has sympathy for the people of Gaza who are suffering from the destruction arising from the so-called war.
But, we wonder, what were the editors of The Chronicle thinking about when they printed this picture? Where is the picture of a bomb hole in Israel, caused by a Hamas rocket? Where is a picture of Israeli children huddled in a bomb shelter when Hamas rockets are raining down upon their communities?
Hamas fires rockets into Gaza with the intent of stopping Hamas rockets. There is a distinction! There is a difference!
Innocent people are killed and wounded on both sides. You are not helping by featuring only the evidence of the suffering of one side.
Joel Pelofsky
Kansas City, Mo.
