Two readers submitted letters about the Israel-Gaza war to our local papers in the last two weeks. 
There is no evidence that either of the writers has gone to any of the Ely-Palestine Solidarity Group’s (EPSG) meetings, documentaries, or presentations. If they had, they might have a different picture of what’s going on in Gaza. I advocate for the people of Gaza and the West Bank.
Israel had every right to retaliate against Hamas after their horrific attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing 2,500 people and taking 250 hostages. However, Israel does not have the right to kill at least 45,000 residents of Gaza (it’s impossible to count the thousands of bodies buried in the rubble); wound 105,000 mostly women and children, with only one or two working hospitals to treat them; target hospitals and schools; and withhold food and other aid. 
Ninety-percent of Gazans have had to run from one place to the next with not much more than the clothes on their backs. Hundreds of thousands live in squalid tent camps, which have also been targeted by Israel. People are starving. People generally eat one meal every other day, if they can even get that. 
This looks like ethnic cleansing to me.
I’m not anti-Jewish, by all means, but I stand in opposition to Benjamin Netanyahu and his administration. Netanyahu has been named a war criminal by the International Criminal Court for his indiscriminate killing and for using starvation as a weapon of war. Israel has closed almost all aid entry points and refuses to provide security for the trucks that are allowed through.
One of these letter-writers gave a revisionist history of the creation of Israel. First of all, I agree that Israel did need a homeland after the Holocaust. However, Israeli leaders quietly disagreed to the U.N. partition of Palestine that gave them 56 percent of the territory and Arabs 42 percent. They always planned to claw back territory bits at a time through war and sanctions, which is exactly what they’ve been doing for the past 70 years. In 1948, 85 percent of the Arabs, who had lived on that land for many generations, many centuries, became refugees.
The writer seems to believe that Palestinian Arabs have no right to any territory. It’s people like him, who don’t seem to care about Palestinians’ suffering, who have inflamed the opinions of pro-Palestinian people worldwide. In order to give Palestinians self-determination, the “two-state solution” has been preferred by many U.S. administrations and nations around the world. But that has gone by the wayside because of Netanyahu’s intransigence and destruction. 
Israel has destroyed Gaza and has gradually encroached on Palestinian mandated property in the West Bank.  Israeli settlers daily commit crimes not allowed by international law: they plow down houses and roads, uproot olive trees and other crops, and steal Palestinians’ homes. I can easily see why Palestinians are angry. And they have no place to go.
I encourage my neighbors to read more real news and real journalism.
Carol Orban
Ely