Gaza Jungle Has Long History
I need to add something important to the Gaza story (“No Freedom Fighters Here,” April 5).
I was stationed in Gaza to the very last day in 1956. Egypt created this hellhole, and Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion gave the order to leave because “Israel could not afford to include 250,000 Arabs educated to hate Jews.”
So we left and Egypt returned to its land grab. To get peace later on, Menachem Begin returned the entire Sinai to Egypt. The Egyptian creation of a human wound on the land of the Jews is still infected with Islamic terror and the once 250,000 Arabs are now maybe 2 million, mostly supporting Islamic terror. Christians have either been forced to convert, slaughtered or found a way to escape this Islamic terror jungle.
Albert Reingewirtz | Vancouver, B.C.
Addressing Gun Violence Requires Hard Work
A recent op-ed is a shameful partisan effort to paint gun violence as an unsolvable problem (“Everyone’s Mad as Hell, and Nobody Has to Take It Anymore,” March 15). It undermines law enforcement, blames those who live with mental illness as well as those who offer treatment to such individuals, and criticizes lawmakers and anyone else who believes there can be regulatory solutions. It then offers the tired gun lobby trope of “hardening targets” and more guns.
I don’t want to live in the world it prescribes, and I certainly don’t want that for my sons. I don’t want to have armed guards at our schools, movie theaters and synagogue board meetings. I want to be able to work, play, learn and pray in safety. And it’s my right to do so.
Significantly, we know how to achieve such safety. The answer is not erecting barriers and arming guards; it’s ensuring that people who should not have guns cannot get them. Every other industrialized nation has the same levels of other violent crime, the same rates of mental illness, the same drug problems, the same violent video games and movies. But none of them have the levels of gun violence and gun deaths — whether by homicide, suicide or unintentional shootings — that we do in the United States.
The difference is easy access to firearms. This is a problem we can solve. It won’t be solved by thoughts and prayers. It will take commitment, action and determination.
Bullets don’t discriminate by race, religion or political party. Gun violence is an American problem that demands an American solution, and we all must be part of it. We need to buckle down and do the hard work of finding common ground and addressing the real problem.
Shira Goodman | Dresher
Editor’s note: Shira Goodman is a candidate for Congress in the 4th Congressional District.
