The Aug. 13 issue of Wednesday Journal carried a letter from Ron Moline about the Israel-Gaza conflict [How ‘educated’ is your view of the Gaza conflict? Viewpoints]. In his letter, he doubted that Hamas fired rockets at Israel from within civilian areas. He expressed doubt that this could be so, as he “personally [has] no idea how true or untrue this ‘fact’ is.” Had Mr. Moline kept up with the news, he would have been aware of reports from France 24 correspondent Gallagher Fenwick on Aug. 7. He showed a rocket launching site within 50 meters of his hotel and within 100 meters of a United Nations building. He would have been aware of reports from reporter Sreenivasan Jain and his camera crew from NDTV (India) on Aug. 5. They filmed and reported on a rocket-launching crew assembling a rocket next to their hotel in a civilian area of Gaza. He would have seen video of the rocket being fired. All of their reporting was done from their hotel room. The hotel was surrounding by other multi-story buildings that looked like concrete and glass.
Mr. Moline also says that Israel has “killed huge numbers of innocent women, children and unarmed men.” Unless he was there, he cannot be any surer of this statement than he can of his lack of conviction regarding rocket fire.
As of this writing we really do not have accurate counts of the dead. And we do not have accurate counts of combatant and non-combatant losses among the Gazans. I have read that the largest group of known deaths has been among men who would be of the age to be combatants, and not out of proportion to many other conflicts of a similar nature. Also, as of this writing, fewer Gazans have been killed than the number of people killed in the Ukraine (according to the Chicago Tribune) since the start of their conflict.
Any loss of life is to be mourned, but Hamas has been raining rockets on Israel for months if not years. It decided to attack Israel by building tunnels. Remember that Hamas did not attack Egypt, the other country that borders Gaza, and the other country that has closed its borders and instituted a blockade.
Alan Peres
Oak Park