To the Editor:

Maureen Aumand’s letter of Aug. 21 asks us to imagine the war in Gaza [“Does an exercise in imagining move us to truly understand the horrors in Gaza?”]. She fails to even mention Hamas’s barbaric Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel that caused this war and that Israeli hostages are still held by Hamas.

Let’s imagine Albany County is surrounded by violent jihadist terrorists whose stated intent for decades has been to destroy and annihilate Albany’s residents and has fired tens of thousands of rockets and mortars at Albany County over the past two decades.

Imagine that at the recent Altamont Fair thousands of highly armed terrorists invaded the fair and murdered 1,200 people with weapons and other means and inflicted torture, rape, sexual violence, burning babies alive, and beheading parents in front of their children and beheading children in front of their parents, and then took over 250 fair attendees hostage. Then the terrorists keep the hostages in terror tunnels and starve and torture them so many are now dead and others have lost 30 to 50 percent of their body weight and are near death, while the terrorists are well fed.

Hamas came to power in 2007 after Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza, permitting the creation of a mini-Palestinian State. Instead of creating a thriving peaceful nation, Hamas created a monstrous terror state with over 300 miles of terror tunnels with its obsession for Israel’s destruction and its desire to kill all the Jews. Before 2005, there was no barrier between Israel and Gaza, and Israelis would go shopping in Gaza and go to restaurants there. Israel had to build a barrier to help protect its people from Hamas’s terror attacks on Israel.

Imagine in the hypothetical situation I’ve described above that Albany County fails to fight back against these terrorists because the terrorists intentionally hide behind the civilian population. So the terrorists relentlessly continue their attacks on Albany County again and again and again until they’ve annihilated all the residents of Albany County.

The above may seem far removed from the people living here in the safety of their homes in Albany County, but in fact those attacks are exactly what Israel suffered from Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023. Hamas has stated they will repeat Oct. 7 over and over if they can. Hamas intentionally hides behind Gazan civilians so that civilian deaths will sway world opinion.

Fortunately, Israel has fought back in self-defense as any other country in the world has the right to do. Israel makes all attempts possible to get innocent civilians out of harm’s way, but Hamas often shoots civilians who try to flee. Israel, like no other country at war, actually sends millions of leaflets, phone calls, and texts to warn civilians to leave before military attacks. Israel has provided tents and other supplies so the civilians can live under shelter during this war.

The war in Gaza could end today if Hamas surrendered and released the live hostages and the corpses of the dead hostages. Hamas cruelly and despicably keeps even corpses as “bargaining chips.”

Israel has delivered 2 million tons of food to Gaza since the war began, that’s one ton for every man, woman and child. No other nation in history except Israel has sent food to the enemy country that attacked it during a war. Actual starvation is occurring to the hostages that Hamas has kept in brutal conditions for almost two years.

The widespread calling of Israel’s war of self-defense as genocide is entirely false.

“Israel’s war is against Hamas: Israel is not seeking to destroy the Palestinian people or the Palestinian population of Gaza, which is what would need to happen in order to correctly apply the term genocide,” according to the American Jewish Committee.

The World Jewish Congress (August 2025, 17th Plenary Assembly Resolutions Edition resolution PA 2505-3) “expresses alarm at the growing convergence of Islamist extremism with far-left movements (the Red-Green Alliance) whereby Islamist extremists exploit far-left groups to advance the Islamist agenda, amplify antisemitic narratives and undermine democratic values.”

Aumand compares Israel’s legitimate war of self-defense against an existential threat to the horrors that the Nazis perpetrated in the Holocaust. Aumand’s comments are typical of Holocaust distortion and representative of antisemitic attempts to demonize Israel. 

Elliott Greene

Guilderland