OrilliaMatters welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected] or via the website. Please include your full name, daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following letter is in response to a letter, LETTER: 'One-sided vigils' not helping bring peace to Middle East published Oct. 13.
Gerald Levine has dehumanized fellow Palestinian health-care workers so much that he believes that they can’t be honoured at a vigil without repeating Israeli hasbara first. But there is no such thing as a one-sided vigil, unless you don’t really think that some people deserve to live.
His use of the phrase “defang the Hamas terrorists” smacks of the genocidal dehumanization used by Israel to continue their mass slaughter and expansionist war.
His mendacious claims of the use of human shields (actually used by Israel, not by Hamas), and the suggestion that the civilian deaths of Oct. 7 were solely by Hamas (actually were not all civilian, and several carried out by the Israeli military via the Hannibal directive) continue to fuel the flames that are burning patients alive in hospitals in Gaza. In the meantime, international medical organizations are now being banned from entry.
We all have a responsibility to do more to end this genocide. If Gerald Levine wishes to focus on shared humanity, I would suggest that he find his own first.
M. Chaudhuri
Orillia
