Children Endangered by Mideast Turmoil

I have no tolerance for parents of either Israeli or Palestinian children who have been killed, injured or terrorized by the unending violence in the area. What parents in their right mind would put their children in danger? If I lived there with my kids, I would move. I would run, hide, steal and sneak across borders to get my kids safe.

What can those parents be thinking? Belief in one of the gods is a stupid reason to put your children in danger. Children are the reason parents exist, work and sacrifice. To complain about the brutality of the Israelis or the Palestinians is to miss the point. The parents are to blame. Move, leave, herd goats in the desert.

I would rather live in a shack with no plumbing, in a safe location, than in a palace in a place where my children are in danger.

Dave Petitto

Palm Springs

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“An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” is, all too obviously, an ethic for many practitioners in today’s world. Anyone who follows events in the Middle East must surely by now understand the total impracticality and moral bankruptcy of policies of blind retribution.

The vengeful practices of Hamas and the Sharon government are mutually murderous, mutually destructive of any possible security (short of genocide) and mutually manipulative of each other. It does not help to watch the shedders of blood on both sides attempting to seek moral sanction from their respective religious traditions. The truth is that nothing good can come to either side in this deadlock.

With all respect for the sorrow of both Israelis and Palestinians, I submit that the Holy Land needs a Gandhi.

John Hergesheimer

Whittier

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Regarding the Aug. 26 letter on Muslim violence: May I make three comments: It was Israel’s Ariel Sharon who deliberately started the present cycle of violence by desecrating Haram Shareef; the only solution to the present dilemma is for the Palestinians to be able to live in peace and with dignity in a sovereign Palestinian state; it was the Muslims who brought Europe out of the Dark Ages into the Age of Enlightenment centuries ago.

Syed Razi

Fullerton