Senator’s condemnation of urban warfare plays into Hamas’s tactics
Senator Bernie Sanders says Israel has the right to fight Hamas but not to make war against the Palestinian people (“No more US complicity with Netanyahu’s war machine in Gaza,” Opinion, April 12). Sanders must know that it is impossible for the Israel Defense Forces to fight Hamas without endangering Palestinian civilians, for the simple reason that Hamas hides in tunnels and exposes civilians to death. He probably also knows that the IDF, as West Point urban warfare expert John Spencer has pointed out repeatedly, has done more to protect civilians than any other military in history.
Therefore, for Sanders to essentially use Hamas’s war crime of using civilian shields as a justification for the United States withholding material support of Israel’s war against Hamas is to do nothing other than protect Hamas. That is, he seeks to condemn the only way of fighting a war that he admits is justified. That is shameless in its hypocrisy.
Fred Baumann
Gambier, Ohio
The writer is a professor of political science at Kenyon College.
Sanders rightly decries US military aid. Most Americans cry, ‘Enough!’
Thank you for publishing Bernie Sanders’ powerful op-ed, “No more US complicity with Netanyahu’s war machine in Gaza.”
I am among those Americans — now a majority, according to surveys Sanders cites — who are appalled by Israel’s war with Hamas. In the first three months of the war, thanks to steady US military aid supporting Israel’s attacks in Gaza, Israel’s forces unleashed on a territory less than half the size of Cape Cod a quantity of explosives three times more powerful than the nuclear bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, according to the Gaza media office. Since the Jan. 26 ruling by the International Court of Justice that Israel must do all it can to prevent genocide, Israel has killed more than 7,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
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As Sanders writes, “History will judge what we do right now.” If the structure of international law erected after World War II to preserve peace and protect civilians is to mean anything at all, the United States must immediately stop its weapons shipments to Israel. Massachusetts taxpayers should realize that we are also complicit in our country’s support of Israel’s war in Gaza, since we contribute a share of the $3.8 billion in annual US military aid.
I hope that Sanders’ op-ed encourages more people to raise their voices and say: Enough!
Nancy Murray
Cambridge
Critique of Israel’s war in Gaza glosses over important factors
Senator Bernie Sanders’ characterization of the Israeli invasion of Gaza as a “war against the Palestinian people” pointedly ignores the central fact that Hamas is using civilians as human shields so that any Israeli response inevitably results in unintended civilian deaths. In addition, Sanders cites the figure of “more than 33,000 Palestinian deaths” without noting that a significant portion are the deaths of Hamas fighters. Sanders insinuates that Israel is intentionally killing civilians. As for the use of bombing, the United States did much the same thing in its role in the 2016-17 invasion of Mosul, Iraq, in attacking Islamic State fighters in order to minimize troop casualties.
While there is room for strong criticism as to Israel’s waging of war against Hamas, Sanders’ simplistic rebuke is unhelpful and plays into Hamas’s hands.
Jon Maddox
Belmont
