The IDF vs Hamas

Dear Editor:

Hamas started a war with Israel in Oct. 7, 2023. They violated the 1949 Geneva Conventions by obliterating the lines between combatants and civilians. The Convention explicitly forbids rape or other forms of sexual violence, which were proudly documented by Hamas and celebrated throughout radical Islam’s sphere of influence.

By contrast, no state but Israel has ever recognized the right of civilians to be protected from the dangers of war and to receive the help they need. The IDF advises civilians to vacate areas where there will be fighting. Hamas does its best to force civilians to remain, to use them as human shields and to increase the death count for propaganda purposes.

Islamists are laser-focused in a manner the West will never be. Since 1928, the Muslim Brotherhood has worked to replace us with a Caliphate. Their vision is of the collective, the Ummah, a community of believers bound together to worship Allah and advance the cause of Islam.

Western societies are based on the individual. Our governments are meant to serve the people who elect them. In dictatorships, the people acquiesce to their masters. Islam means ‘submission’.

Sincerely
Len Bennett, Author of ‘Unfinished Work’
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Indifference to Antisemitism – Then & Now

Dear Editor:

The U. S. Department of Justice has determined that the current administration at George Washington University has exhibited “deliberate indifference” to antisemitism—such as the incident in which a protester waved a “Final Solution” sign at an anti-Israel rally on campus.

The verdict of “indifference to antisemitism” could apply to the GW administration in the 1930s, too. In October 1933, Gustav Struve, an official of Nazi Germany’s embassy in Washington, was invited to speak at GW. Nazi representatives also visited GW in 1934 and 1937.

Films about Germany that were supplied by the German embassy were shown on campus. And at GW’s “International Night” in 1937, Hitler’s vicious antisemitic policies did not deter the university from displaying a large swastika flag alongside the other foreign flags.

During those years, GW maintained a junior-year student exchange program with the Nazi-controlled University of Munich, despite its purge of Jewish faculty, adoption of a Nazi curriculum, and book-burnings.

Some GW students who spent a year at the University of Munich returned with upbeat reports about the new Germany. GW student Mary-Anne Greenough, for example, stated in a 1937 university newsletter that during her year in Germany, she attended the Nazis’ celebration of the anniversary of Hitler’s failed 1923 putsch; she said she found the event “worthy of admiration.”

Some GW faculty members who visited Germany during the 1930s likewise came back with positive descriptions of the Nazi regime.

Assistant Professor of Philosophy Christopher Garnett, returning from a visit to Germany in 1934, reported to the campus historical society that “[t]he optimism which permeated the Germans, even those who at first opposed the present regime, is almost unbelievable.”

Fast forward fifty years t0 another GW administration exhibiting indifference to antisemitism. In 1985, GW presented an honorary doctorate to Mircea Eliade, a noted scholar of comparative religion. Before Eliade was a scholar, he was a Nazi collaborator who served as an official of the pro-Nazi Iron Guard regime in Rumania.

Eliade even continued defending the Iron Guard after the war, praising it in his 1963 autobiography. For some reason, neither Eliade’s service to an antisemitic regime nor his continued praise of it decades later deterred GW from giving him an honorary doctorate.

The GW administration has not been indifferent to its past racism against other minorities. Four years ago, it removed the name of former president Cloyd Heck Marvin from the student center because he advocated segregation.

And two years ago, GW changed its school moniker from “Colonials” to “Revolutionaries” because of the injustices associated with colonialism.

But how does GW respond to the concerns of its Jewish students and faculty? Utter indifference—then and now.

Sincerely
Prof. Rafael Medoff

Washington Reclaimed from Crime

Dear Editor:

President Trump’s decision to call in the National Guard to restore order in Washington, D. C., is not only justified but urgently necessary. For too long, our nation’s capital—like several of America’s great cities—has been gripped by a wave of crime and disorder that leaves law-abiding citizens fearful in their own neighborhoods. The steady rise of violent assaults, brazen robberies, and shootings on city streets corrodes the very foundation of civil society. Without decisive intervention, lawlessness risks becoming the “new normal.”

The presence of the National Guard is a clear message: the federal government will not stand idle while its citizens live in fear. Violent crime does not simply injure its direct victims—it exacts a psychological toll on entire communities. Families live under constant anxiety, children grow up learning to fear their surroundings, and businesses flee, hollowing out urban life. The damage to the national psyche is immense. People begin to lose faith in the rule of law itself, and with that, the stability of our democracy is undermined.

This problem is not unique to Washington. Chicago and New York have also become synonymous with violent crime and deteriorating public safety. Despite political rhetoric promising reform, residents in these cities continue to endure carjackings in broad daylight, subway assaults, and senseless murders. Local governments, constrained by failed policies or political timidity, have proven incapable of stemming the tide. In such circumstances, the intervention of the National Guard is not an overreach—it is a moral duty.

Critics argue that deploying the Guard is too heavy-handed. I would ask them to speak to the families who have lost children to stray bullets, to the shopkeepers robbed repeatedly until their businesses collapse, or to the commuters who now view public transportation as a daily gamble with their lives. For them, the absence of safety is a far greater tyranny than the sight of uniformed men and women securing their streets.

President Trump is right to act boldly where others have faltered. His initiative in Washington must be the beginning of a broader effort: to reclaim our cities from criminality, to restore confidence in civic life, and to remind Americans that their right to live free of fear will be defended with strength and resolve.

Respectfully,
James Mc Cord
Little Egg Harbor, NJ