Letters

A recent letter by Paula Angelone [“Sound Familiar?” Letters, April 11] compares the extremism and character of Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu to that of Donald Trump, including their legal woes in their home nations. Ms. Angelone implies that Netanyahu is using the war in Gaza as a means to deflect his legal troubles as he escalates the war effort to eradicate Hamas. She complains that Netanyahu “justifies his behavior and seems not to care how his allies react, as if they are expendable.”

It seems more and more apparent that liberals struggle with moral clarity when it comes to the genocide that Hamas perpetrated against Israeli citizens and rationalize the beheadings, dismemberments, rape and numerous other atrocities Hamas terrorists inflicted upon Israelis as payback for the years of oppression that have been inflicted upon them. Leading university presidents have been forced to resign for waffling on the rampant antisemitism on campuses since the October 7 attack on Israel.

Hamas has been the chosen Palestinian ruling authority by general elections since 2006, and they inherited a chaotic situation of utter lawlessness. The terrorist factions buried inside Palestine have a stated mission to annihilate Israel. How much of that is promoted by the ruling government is anyone’s guess, but, make no mistake, it is no small faction.

Any leader in such a position as Netanyahu has the moral obligation to protect his nation to the best of his abilities, which, in this case, entails the complete destruction of these terrorist factions, regardless of the fragile sentiments of people completely shielded from the realities of war.

Ms. Angelone goes on to glibly imply that Trump wouldn’t consider waging a war, “unless it serves him, that is.” Apparently, she has forgotten that Trump was primarily responsible for initiating our withdrawal from the 20-year Afghanistan war. Joe Biden immediately screwed that up, along with his multitude of other out-of-the-gate failings.

President Trump kept us out of any new conflicts, while Biden did everything in his power to ensure a war in Ukraine. Reference the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 and absorb the existential threat from Vladimir Putin’s eyes as subsequent U.S. presidents, and especially Biden, promoted the ever-advancing NATO positions closer to Russian borders.

Biden wants to keep fighting this war in Ukraine, a war it cannot possibly win. While Trump probably wouldn’t have allowed this to even begin, Biden must ensure its continuance until after the next election. Always pandering for votes, when Biden first took office, it took him only a few short months to create the disaster on our southern border by canceling every effective border security measure that had been put in place. Many would argue this “serves him” to increase his voting base.

John Porta

Westhampton