Confronting the NYT’s Thomas Friedman

Dear Editor:

Thomas Friedman is justifiably afraid of the violence directed against Jews by those allegedly outraged over Israel’s response to the Hamas invasion. But is it rage against Israel’s actions, or against Jews for being Jews? The foundational hatred of Jews espoused by the Muslim Brotherhood and those influenced by this organization is the religiously mandated hatred of Jews expressed in the Koran, written centuries before there was an Israel that calls for the murder of all Jews. Not coincidentally, Article Seven of the Hamas Charter calls for the murder of Jews using the exact language of the Koran. The “international/Arab/Palestinian Authority peacekeeping force” that Freidman suggests should keep the peace will fold up like tents in the face of a revitalized Hamas and there are many in the Arab world that will work for Hamas revitalization. Israel can’t take that chance.

I urge Mr. Friedman to contemplate the origin of the antisemitic explosion which started on the day Hamas invaded Israel and butchered its people, an act of resistance that was celebrated worldwide by people who loathed the existence of Israel and were emboldened by Hamas’ success. It doesn’t really matter what Israel does, stop the war, let Hamas live to destabilize Gaza and fight another day, or elevate the corrupt PA to the position of peace keeper. None of these will secure Jewish lives, in fact, they will endanger them.

Mr. Friedman should have the courage to stand up to the antisemites and be thankful that he is backed up by a strong Israel to whom ‘never again’ means something.

Sincerely,
Larry Shapiro
Calgary, Alberta, CANADA

Hamas is to Blame for Suffering of Gazans

Dear Editor:

The assertion that Israel is to blame for the situation that civilian Gazans are in was debunked by Ambassador Mike Huckabee on May 21 (source: npr.org/2025/05/21/nx-s1-5404970/ambassador-israel-mike-huckabee-interview). Speaking with NPR, Huckabee asserted that “The prolonged suffering for everybody is on Hamas, and I’m outraged that the U.K., Canada, [and] France – they’re blaming the wrong perpetrator.” Huckabee also said, “I’m not in the position to tell the Israelis how to conduct their war. … My family members weren’t murdered and massacred, mutilated [on October 7, 2023].”

Israel is conducting a war on terrorism with no moral difference from the war that Americans waged against Al-Qaeda after 9/11. Hamas made the deliberate choice to start this war, and Israel is acting not only in self-defense, but also to prevent future conflicts.

Let’s be clear: Hamas started this war. Refusing to hold them fully accountable only emboldens more violence.

Sincerely,
Moshe Phillips
National Chairman
Americans For A Safe Israel

Why Israel’s Fight is the World’s Fight

Dear Editor:

The war now raging between Israel and the Islamic Republic of Iran is not merely a regional conflict. It is not even, as some have simplistically framed it, a tit-for-tat clash between two rivals. It is a war for the future of the civilized world. The Jewish state, under siege from a theocratic regime bent on its annihilation, is engaged in an existential fight for its survival–and in so doing, it is shielding the free world from the apocalyptic ambitions of a nuclear-armed Iran.

Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, does not merely wish to see a Middle East without Israel. His regime aspires to reorder the world through violence, terror, and blackmail. For decades, Tehran has exported jihad through its Revolutionary Guard and its terrorist proxies–Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis–not only to Israel’s borders but into the capitals of Europe, South America, and beyond. But now, with Israel’s bold and unprecedented strikes deep inside Iranian territory, the rules of engagement have changed.

Israel is not just targeting centrifuges or missile factories. This war, as painful and dangerous as it is, has clarity of purpose: dismantling the machinery of a regime that has held 85 million Iranians hostage under tyranny and fear. This is not about punishing the Iranian people–on the contrary, it is about liberating them. Every missile launched at Natanz, Isfahan, or Tehran’s military headquarters is not only a blow against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, but a blow for the cause of human freedom.

The West must understand that Israel is acting where others have only postured. The diplomatic theatre of nuclear talks, the empty threats of red lines, the appeasement masquerading as engagement–these have all failed. The mullahs have used every pause to enrich uranium and tighten their grip. Israel, isolated and threatened, has had no choice but to act. And we must not merely support her–we must recognize the moral clarity and global necessity of her mission.

The idea that regime change is a dangerous or destabilizing goal is a luxury of those not living under repression. Ask the thousands of Iranian women beaten and murdered for refusing to veil themselves. Ask the protesters imprisoned and tortured. Ask the families of dissidents assassinated abroad. The Islamic Republic is not misunderstood–it is malevolent. Its removal is not only a strategic necessity but a moral imperative.

When the dust settles, history will remember this war not as a mere chapter in the long Arab-Israeli conflict, but as a defining moment when a small democracy dared to confront a totalitarian regime that the world tiptoed around. For Israel, this is survival. For the West, this is salvation.

Let us not wring our hands over Israel’s determination. Let us salute it.

Sincerely,
[A concerned citizen who believes the fight for freedom sometimes begins with one nation daring to resist alone]

No Deal with Iran Will Free Its People

Dear Editor:

As the world once again turns its gaze toward the Middle East, watching with apprehension the unfolding war between the State of Israel and the Islamic Republic of Iran, the temptation among Western policymakers–particularly in Washington–is to reach for the most familiar of diplomatic illusions: the nuclear deal. There is growing speculation that President Trump may get Tehran back to the negotiating table to deliver a so-called “deal” that reins in Iran’s nuclear program. But let us be under no illusion. Any agreement struck with the clerical regime in its current form will be a Band-Aid over a gaping wound. A nuclear deal might delay the countdown to midnight–but it will do nothing to free the Iranian people from the chains of the Ayatollahs.

Israel understands this far better than the diplomats lounging in Geneva or Brussels. For Jerusalem, this war is not about diplomatic posturing or temporary containment. It is about survival. More profoundly, it is about confronting the poisonous ideology of a regime that seeks not only to obliterate the Jewish state, but to smother its own people in religious tyranny. The Islamic Republic, under the iron fist of Ayatollah Khamenei and the bloodied boots of the IRGC, represents the worst hybrid of modern despotism: a theology wedded to totalitarianism, cloaked in revolutionary zeal, and fueled by genocidal antisemitism.

No nuclear agreement can alter the ideological DNA of the Iranian regime. The same clerics who might agree to suspend enrichment in Fordow or Natanz will, in the next breath, greenlight the murder of women for unveiling in the streets of Shiraz or order militias in Lebanon to launch rockets into Israeli kindergartens. The Western fixation on Iran’s nuclear ambition–important though it is–often serves as a convenient excuse to ignore the more immediate evil of the regime’s repression of its own people and its export of terror.

Israel, through this war, is not only defending its soil but asserting a moral clarity that much of the West has lost. It is saying: We will not wait until Iranian missiles are tipped with nuclear warheads. We will not permit another Holocaust to emerge under the banner of political appeasement. And perhaps most nobly, it is saying to the Iranian people: We see you. We understand that your enemy is not us–but the same tyrants who rob you of dignity, liberty, and life.

Sincerely,
Edward Nezersayydeh
Queens, NY