It pains me again to no end to have to strike out at a paper I love, respect and need for my edification and connection to the issues that directly impact our local community. Your news hole is by no means large enough to properly, read comprehensively, address such a complex international issue. 

The writer in his inventory of invective conveniently ignores the significance of the Hamas calumny and infamy of October 7, 2023. The brutal, indescribable slaughter by Hamas of 1,200 innocent souls, among them many who rescued countless Gaza residents from illness and disease; the taking of 250 hostages; the hundreds of miles of tunnels serving as a battleground for their terrorist incursions and deadly attacks against innocent Israelis; the rape of women; the butchering of babies; the arson inflicted on border Kibbutzim, towns and communities; the greatest atrocities committed against the Jewish people since the horrors of the Holocaust; the support of more than 75 percent of Gazan Palestinians for these heinous acts of bare barbarism; rocket attacks against Israel from hospitals, mosques, churches and schools; and the use of children as human shields, directly placing youngsters in harm’s way within would-be war zones—and the list goes on—left Israel with no choice but to pursue all and every necessary means to finally eradicate Gaza’s evil empire.

War, especially a war against an incontrovertible existential threat to the Israeli, and by obvious extension the Jewish people—even when fought according to a code of ethics unique to the Israel Defense Forces, and without parallel anywhere else in the world—is messy and tragic. But what self-respecting and responsible nation would suffer such cruelty and remain as sitting ducks?

Our paper has once again carried one man’s screed, ignorance and dishonesty and worse of all, his gratuitous use of the term “genocide.”

As a parent and relative of Israeli soldiers and as a lifelong Religious Zionist, I stand appalled by the various conflations and half truths espoused by this dreadful drivel. He knows not what he says. He is at best prejudiced against Israel and at worst an intractable foe.

Please feel free to once again share my views and exception to this misinformation. I cannot remain silent, as silence is acquiesence, and I owe it to all caring human beings to restate the facts in the face of your writer’s fictions.

Respectfully shared in friendship and hope for peace to conquer the baseless hatred that engulfs Hamas,

Rabbi Lawrence S. Zierler is the president and CEO of Sayva Associates, an elder-care practice based in Sullivan County. He has served as a pulpit rabbi, hospital and hospice chaplain, Jewish educator and communal executive.