To the editor: Visitor contributor Nisreen Qawas’ op-ed was heart-wrenching (“Gaza stays a disaster of youngsters’s psychological well being,” Feb. 15). There’s no query that the kids of Gaza have suffered, each bodily and emotionally, from the warfare between Israel and Hamas.
However we should ask ourselves to what extent that struggling rests on the ft of Hamas. The 1988 Hamas Constitution referred to as for the elimination of the state of Israel and killing Jews earlier than the “Day of Judgment.” It rejects negotiated political settlements, no matter any value to Palestinian civilians.
Along with cash and weapons provided by Iran, Hamas taxes the inhabitants of Gaza and has used a lot of that cash for weapons and to construct a whole lot of miles of tunnels, typically beneath civilian neighborhoods. There, Hamas leaders and combatants, not the kids of Gaza, cover from Israel’s retaliation for the unprovoked Oct. 7, 2023, slaughter of civilians in Israel, together with many ladies and kids.
Hamas has additionally used faculties and hospitals as staging areas for his or her rockets and different weapons. So, who’s accountable when Israel targets these areas, regardless that it warns civilians?
Struggle is hell and tragic. Make no mistake about it, what’s going on in Gaza is warfare; it’s not genocide, though there are genocides occurring in different elements of the world that nobody within the West protests.
Hamas may finish the struggling in Gaza at any time.
Hank Schlinger, Glendale
..
To the editor: Throughout this 12 months’s Palm Springs Worldwide Movie Pageant, I attended a screening of “The Voice of Hind Rajab.”
The movie, which has the precise recording of the voice of Hind Rajab, a 5-year-old woman who was trapped in a automotive along with her useless members of the family after they have been killed by Israeli forces, was heartbreaking. As Qawas recounts, after hours of making an attempt to get clearance from the IDF, a Palestinian ambulance lastly bought near rescuing Hind. Simply if you thought this 5-year-old woman was going to make it, IDF forces not solely struck Hind’s automotive however the ambulance, additionally killing two volunteer medics working within the Gaza Strip.
There was deafening silence within the theater. It was tough to grasp the dearth of humanity.
Whereas Israel says there is no such thing as a genocide, the world is witnessing the close to destruction of Gaza — hospitals, faculties, universities, companies, all semblance of what was as soon as a thriving strip. Whereas there was allegedly a ceasefire, Israel continues the bombardment. Based on Gaza’s Ministry of Well being, greater than 600 Palestinians have been killed because the ceasefire settlement. Israel additionally halted operations of a number of giant support organizations over guidelines about disclosing employees data.
Within the meantime, Israel confiscates extra land within the West Financial institution and demolishes extra houses. Will the Palestinians ever style freedom and reside a traditional life? Will the kids survive with out psychological and bodily assist?
Thanks, Los Angeles Occasions, for having the braveness to print Qawas’ op-ed on the kids of Gaza.
George Mouro, Rancho Mirage
