Letters to the Editor | Aug. 22, 2025

I’m not a biblical scholar, but I am curious about which part of the Christian Scriptures talks about mocking those less fortunate than ourselves? Many people seem to be taking great glee in the misfortune of those souls being snatched up by masked secret police and locked in immigration detention camps. Smiling politicians proudly pose for pictures while bragging about how ruthless and tough they are. Alligator Alley, Detention Depot — even the Nazis didn’t make up nicknames for their camps.

Stefan Keller, Huntingdon Valley

It is wrong to glorify concentration camps with monikers that make them sound almost like amusement park rides. We should not adopt names that pander to the rhetoric of hate. The camps should be called what they are: concentration camps. It is our moral duty to resist them. One way to do so would be to abandon the use of the abhorrent nicknames.

David Buchbinder, Narberth

I feel sickened watching Donald Trump play Russian roulette with lives — taking over the Washington, D.C., police force as he plans his Midas ballroom, revealing his ruthless endgame: Do all possible to rule out a 2028 presidential election. I feel rage watching Benjamin Netanyahu turn Israel, once respected as a principled democracy and trusted friend of the U.S., into a pariah nation. I cannot control a racing heart and tears as I see the tormented faces of the starving in Gaza, the wide-eyed children too weak to cry, and the agonized faces of Israelis, waiting to know the fate of their missing loved ones.

It is necessary to understand what causes hatred to destroy decency, allows envy and jealousy to destroy love. And to unite to protect ourselves, our country, our future, from leaders with these deficits. Psychologically, I believe Trump was terrified of his father’s capacity for cruelty, which he saw destroy his brother. Trump knew if he disappointed his father, this rage would be turned on him. To protect himself, he became his father’s bullying clone. Netanyahu lives in the shadow of his older brother, Yonatan (Yoni), his parents’ adored oldest son and favorite child. Revered in Israel, Yoni was the architect of the brilliant, successful 1976 Entebbe hostage rescue mission, where he died at age 30. Netanyahu’s blind determination to hold onto power has led to world condemnation of himself and his country. Going back to ancient times, Abraham’s abandonment of his older son, Ishmael, begs impact examination — it has led to centuries of Arab hatred toward his father’s chosen son, Isaac, an embodiment of the Jewish people.

Trump does not have the inner resources to recognize the damage of bullying and shaming. Netanyahu will never see the roots of his refusal to grow honorably to maturity. But the long-standing pain of hatred, humiliation, envy, and rivalry between brothers can be healed when awareness is strengthened by action. Jews worldwide must determine somehow, someway to recognize the horrific impact of Ishmael’s rejection — and take the lead in plans to enter a decimated Gaza under U.N. protection, bringing food and medical supplies, offering healing and preservation. In this way, working together, brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, parents and offspring, will transform desert into homeland. Millions worldwide will not only embrace this effort. They will actively participate in it.

SaraKay Smullens, Philadelphia

Philadelphia knows the power of history — how it’s told, and how it’s hidden. That is why the White House’s audit of eight Smithsonian museums, which was released earlier this month, is so troubling: The National Museum of African Art was excluded, even though it hides the slave-trade origins of the Benin bronzes while transferring hundreds of millions in treasures to the heirs of African slave traders.

In 2022, 29 bronzes were gifted by the Smithsonian to Nigeria for the Oba of Benin — the heir of a royal house that, for centuries, sold African captives into slavery in exchange for brass manillas, a type of currency that resembles a bracelet. Those manillas were melted down and cast into the bronzes. Millions of African Americans — deceased and alive — paid for these works with their lives.

Meanwhile, a handful of bronzes remain on display in Washington “on loan,” still stripped of any reference to their slave-trade origins.

Would the Smithsonian dare gift slave-trade treasures to the heirs of European traffickers? Justice demands the National Museum of African Art face the same scrutiny — and that this history be told honestly.

Deadria Farmer-Paellmann, executive director, Restitution Study Group

There was a time not too long ago when physicians would settle within the community, join a group, or set up their practice of medicine where they lived, and behave as an essential citizen within their town. They would involve themselves in local activities and feel that they actually had a stake in the affairs of their place of business and residence.

With outside entities owning practices that have little or no community ties to the actual provision of medical care, we have now truly entered the era of corporatization of healthcare. Under the guise of increased throughput and improved financial competency, the private equity market has made the case for the purchase of medical practices by benefiting their outside investors as a primary business strategy.

In reading that U.S. Digestive has now sold its amalgamation of gastrointestinal practices to UnitedHealth, the care of digestive diseases in our local region has been airlifted to the insurer’s corporate office in Minnesota. Medicine managed long distance cannot properly address the needs of a community with the same local understanding as it had provided in past years. Undoubtedly, in matters of healthcare, “progress” evaluated solely through financial metrics is clearly shortsighted and merely serves to shortchange our patient community to receive the care they deserve.

Harvey Guttmann, chief emeritus, division of gastroenterology, Abington Hospital, Abington-Jefferson Health

Up until last week, I worked as a pediatric speech therapist in Chester County, Montgomery County, and Delaware County.

In all the concern about SEPTA funding, left neglected are all the rest of the things in the state that are dependent upon government funding. As a speech therapist, I worry about children in all 67 Pennsylvania counties losing early intervention services. Providers are being told they are not going to be reimbursed because the budget bill has not been passed. Even though my boss did everything in her power, she had no other option but to lay off her employees.

Is providing services to support children and their families unimportant to Pennsylvania legislators?

The entire Pennsylvania budget is essential to keeping the state functioning, not just the public transportation piece. Why are our elected officials holding news conference after news conference in support of public transportation and ignoring the other needs of families, children, and seniors? This Pennsylvania budget should have been passed months ago. Do it today.

Laura Wolman, West Chester

As Pennsylvania public transit riders wait for definite news regarding their fate with the SEPTA budget cuts, it might provide them some sense of justice, or at least schadenfreude, if they call their representative in Harrisburg and insist that House Bill 1682 be passed. HB 1682 is a bipartisan bill requiring all the salaries of our state legislators to be suspended if the state budget is not passed on time. From the governor to our local state representatives, no one gets paid if they don’t do their job. Kind of like the rest of us.

Sheila Mayne, Philadelphia

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