To the Editor:

Tom Ellis’s letter to the editor of Oct. 31, 2024 is a hateful, vicious litany of anti-Israel, antisemitic lies and misinformation under the guise of political discourse [“Why does the United States pledge unwavering loyalty to Israel?” Nov. 1, 2024].

Here are the facts:

— No Gazans would have been killed nor would the war in Gaza have occurred if the terrorist group Hamas did not attack Israel on Oct. 7, 2023;

— Israel has every right to defend itself against terrorists;

— Hamas intentionally hides behind civilians desiring civilian deaths for their propaganda, while Israel never intentionally attacks noncombatants or civilians;

— Israel's multiple efforts to have peace with the Palestinians over decades have been consistently rejected and met with violence and attacks on Israel;

— The radical Islamic terror axis supporting Hamas, led by Iran, does not want a two-state solution, it wants a one-state solution with no Israel; and

— This war would end now if Hamas surrenders and releases the hostages.

Callously, Mr. Ellis does not mention even once that Israel was brutally attacked on Oct. 7, 2023 by Hamas and Gazan civilians who murdered, burnt families alive, beheaded, tortured innocent people and abducted hostages.

Nor does he mention that hostages still remain in Gaza. He ignores the fact that Hamas and the Iranian terror axis want to destroy Israel.

Mr. Ellis laments that Israel caused Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies to explode, but the vast majority of those injured were Hezbollah terrorists carrying those devices, causing an extremely precise attack on Hezbollah terrorists.

Mr. Ellis absurdly cites the United Nations as a worthy institution, but the U.N. General Assembly hasn’t even condemned Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 atrocities.

The U.N. is a complete failure in the Middle East:

— About 12 percent of United Nations Relief and Works Agency workers participated in the brutal Hamas attacks;

— UNRWA workers have diverted aid earmarked for Gazan civilians to Hamas’ terrorist military purposes and/or to Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists (Times of Israel 7/12/2024);

— Every one of the Hamas terrorists has been indoctrinated by UNRWA’s education system that teaches Palestinians to hate and murder Jews and glorifies terrorism (UN Watch 3/14/2023); and

— The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon has been useless at enforcing U.N. resolution 1701 since UNIFIL has failed to disarm Hezbollah and prevent Hezbollah from attacking Israel with rockets and drones continuously since Oct. 8, 2023 (American Foreign Policy Council 10/17/2024 I. Berman).

The U.N. is a useless antisemitic organization: In seven years, it has passed 140 resolutions against Israel while only passing 68 against all other countries worldwide combined (U.N. Watch 10/14/2022).

Mr. Ellis asserts that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. The number of deaths in Gaza cited by Mr. Ellis is entirely unreliable since not only is this figure reported by a terrorist group but also does not differentiate between civilians and terrorists.

It is this same unreliable data that is being used by the Lancet and others for the sole purpose of condemning Israel. Civilian deaths are never wanted by the Israel Defense Forces but they are inevitable in war.

The IDF has used millions of leaflets, phone calls, and other messages to warn civilians to evacuate areas before military operations. The IDF successfully evacuated peacefully nearly one million civilians from Rafah in southern Israel (Jerusalem Post 5/20/2024 Y. Bob) and most recently from northern Gaza, as well as other areas, and has warned civilians in southern Lebanon to evacuate before attacking Hezbollah, all to minimize civilian casualties.

This is the exact opposite of the definition of genocide yet antisemites have the audacity to accuse Israel of genocide knowing that the Jewish people suffered a true genocide by the Nazis in World War II. Criminally, Hamas seeks as many civilian casualties as possible for its propaganda purposes and achieves that by using the Gazan civilian population as human shields.

Mr. Ellis denies Israel’s right to defend itself. The war in Gaza is in a most difficult densely populated urban combat setting and with Hamas hiding in over 300 miles of terror tunnels.

More shocking is why has The Altamont Enterprise published Mr. Ellis’s hateful letter which is devoid of any facts and full of misinformation? The Altamont Enterprise’s mission statement is “to find the truth, and report it fairly.” However, it has utterly failed by publishing another letter from Mr. Ellis (his other was on July 18, 2024) that could equally have been written by Hamas and the Iranian terror axis.

For those seeking factual information, the Jerusalem Post <jpost.com> contains mainstream articles and commentary about Israel and the Middle East. Mr. Ellis vilifies Israel, accusing Israel of a modern day blood libel. The Altamont Enterprise has failed to fulfill its mission to be a “speaker of true things.”

Elliott Greene

Guilderland

Editor’s note: The Altamont Enterprise runs an open forum for the free exchange of ideas, generally limited to local issues. The point is to allow people with varying viewpoints to understand one another.

I wrote an editorial soon after the Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel after a Jewish mother spoke to the Guilderland School Board — “What will rise from the flames of war?” — using a local lens to look at an important issue. It then seemed only fair to allow readers to share their views. While I turn away letters every week on national and international issues, I have allowed these because of the editorial.