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

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