Column a rant; think about Hamas rule over strip

Bruce Ramsey has a memory problem about Israel and Gaza [“Standing up for Gaza’s people,” Opinion, March 31]. Israel turned over Gaza four years ago. Hopes were higher for peace.

Hamas rules that area, lobs rockets that have killed at least one Israeli only days ago and teaches its children it is OK to kill not just Israelis but Jews all around.

As to the young lady killed by the Israelis: That issue never escaped Israel’s concerns. However, how many Arabs or Palestinians have ever been tried even once for the long list of atrocities visited upon not only their Jewish neighbors, but in venues around the world —including schoolchildren in Ma’alot?

The column repeated the rant of people who just showed up to check things out. On the numerous occasions when Israeli heads of state made very public commitments to the Palestinians, they were met with jihads of varying kinds or wars of attrition. No doubt Israel can make negotiations work with Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority —but can Hamas and its minions do it too?

— Joseph Honick, Bainbridge Island

Qassam rockets killed at least 14

Bruce Ramsey’s column repeats the lie that the Qassam rockets fired at Israel (more than 6,000) “hadn’t killed any Israelis, but they might have.”

The rockets fired by these “hotheads” —presumably the same hotblooded types who threw fellow Palestinians off Gazan rooftops, blindfolded and handcuffed, during Hamas’ bloody coup in June 2007 — have in fact killed more than a dozen Israelis and wounded scores more. Less than two weeks ago, a rocket attack from Gaza proved fatal as a Thai farmworker was killed.

Downplaying the rockets’ deadliness by calling them “homemade pipe-bomb-type rockets” obscures the fact that the launching of these rockets at civilians is not only a war crime, but also a weapon of terror that has traumatized thousands of Israeli children and adults, in addition to murdering at least 14 people on Israeli soil.

— David Brumer, Seattle