Not Israel's fault

Your news story, "Gaza running out of money" [Nation & World, Nov. 25] confuses cause and effect, leaving your readers with the incorrect impression that the misery in Gaza is somehow Israel's fault.

Gaza is ruled by a murderous theocracy more committed to Israel's destruction than to the well-being of its own subjects. It invests in rockets, missiles and explosives targeting Israeli civilians instead of in education, health care and infrastructure for the poor Palestinian people.

No international law or moral code requires a state to trade with its sworn enemy or to provide it with humanitarian aid, yet Israel still continues to supply water, electricity, fuel, medicine and food to the people of Gaza.

The problems of the Palestinian population are not caused by Israeli sanctions. They are entirely self-inflicted, the natural consequence of a war waged by a regime indifferent to, or even welcoming, the terrible damage to its own society.

--Nevet Basker, Bellevue

They're to blame

Let us use our memory and sound factual knowledge to examine your biased and inaccurate story on Gaza's latest border closure.

The murderous and repressive regime of Hamas has hoarded gas and food and has refused to provide them. The Gazans then suffer whilst being used as stage props for a show to the world's reflexively heartbroken audience. We are heartbroken — as are so many Israelis, Gazans and West Bank citizens and politicians — at the crimes against humanity being committed daily by Hamas against its own subjects.

Let us remember the Gazans set about destroying a bequeathed multimillion dollar agricultural and residential infrastructure the moment the Israeli citizens left Gaza. Let us also remember that the Gazans have permitted endless missile terror to rain down on many of the towns and cities and farming communities of southern Israel, have fired on the border crossings when they have been opened, and continue to try to infiltrate the border, kidnap soldiers and insinuate terrorists into sovereign Israel.

Every kindergarten in southern Israel has a six-inch concrete roof over it now and the PTSD [Post Traumatic Stress Disorder] of children and adults in southern Israel has reached staggering numbers.

And let us also remember that Gaza is nearly empty of Jews while one fifth of Israel's population is Arab, Every religion is practiced freely in its borders and every race on the planet is represented in her citizenry.

--Sharon Finegold, Seattle