Letters to the Editor: Think Israel is too hard on Hamas? Read what was done to innocent Israelis

Los Angeles Times Opinion
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TEL AVIV, ISRAEL -- NOVEMBER 7, 2023: Nir Blatman organizes incoming shipment of human remains recovered from the communities near the Gaza border where Hamas focused their unprecedented assault for further examination at the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Tel Aviv, Israel, Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2023. The staff of the Institute of Forensic Medicine, led by Dr. Chen Kugel, have been working since Oct. 7 on the Hamas massacre of 1,200 people. He has been trying to understand not only the causes of death but the hate behind them. The remains come from towns and kibbutzim near the Gaza border including Sderot, Kfar Aza and Be'eri, and the musical festival in the Negev Desert where 260 died. They are collected by Zaka, a team of mostly Orthodox volunteers, who scour the landscape so that every possible part of a person can be buried according to Jewish custom. "Maybe," said Kugel, "Hamas wanted to make a post-traumatic stress syndrome for this country. Never have so many Israelis died in one day. They wanted to make us afraid, to feel insecure. But on the contrary. What we saw here was a country reunited. We understood who the real enemy was." (MARCUS YAM / LOS ANGELES TIMES)
Nir Blatman organizes human remains recovered from communities attacked Oct. 7 by Hamas at the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Tel Aviv. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)

To the editor: Dr. Chen Kugel, head of Israel's National Center for Forensic Medicine in Tel Aviv, is quoted as saying, "We don’t bomb Gaza to teach them a lesson. We do it because we learned our lesson." ("Inside the Israeli lab 'reassembling and reconnecting' the mangled bodies of the dead," Nov. 16)

He states how visceral the Oct. 7 attack was, like a fury in the desert. The burnings, the beheadings, the cruelty.

How does Israel ever make peace with people who support the butchery of Hamas?

Ann C. Hayman, Westwood

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To the editor: If anyone doesn’t understand the reasoning behind Israel’s need to forever dismantle the truly evil Hamas organization, one need only read Times reporter Jeffrey Fleishman's article describing explicitly what was done to innocent Israelis on Oct. 7.

Deborah Shapiro, Woodland Hills

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To the editor: I was born 75 years ago in Cluj, Romania. Both of my parents were Holocaust survivors. ("I'm the child of a Holocaust survivor. I know the trauma inflicted on Gaza will last for generations," Opinion, Nov. 17)

My mother was taken to Auschwitz from the ghetto of Targu Mures, and my father was taken from the Bungur forest near Dej in Transylvania. Most of their family of about 30 people were gassed and burned right away when they arrived there. My bedtime stories were about how they survived until liberation by Russian and American forces.

I am traumatized by the fact that Rabbi Elliot Kukla's article does not mention the Hamas massacre of Oct. 7. Are we once again targeted for extinction and forbidden to defend ourselves?

Esther Lainer, Los Angeles

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.