Letters to the Editor | July 29, 2025

How could President Donald Trump so easily and glibly wash his hands of the suffering children of Gaza? The United States should be negotiating around the clock with Israel and with Hamas to reach a temporary ceasefire to provide truckloads of water and food, and send in enough medical personnel and supplies to assist and save the starving children of Gaza. It appears at this time that many will already face death due to their malnutrition. But there is time to save many thousands more. It appears the United States is the only country that has the power and resources to urge Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas to make a temporary stoppage of the slaughter. Now is not the time to relinquish our moral and humane responsibility to these children and their parents. Our leaders must act now. We cannot wait. Their lives are in our hands.

William “Bill” Mattia, Pennsauken

There is only one reason for starvation in Gaza. Hamas rules by terror and refuses to release hostages, surrender, and leave Gaza. Hamas would rather see the population starve than admit defeat. Like Hitler’s Nero decree at the end of World War II, Hamas demands that Gaza be a smoking ruin and its people dead to justify its disastrous policies.

Alexander W. Ross Jr., Mount Laurel

As a nation, we may be sorely divided on the issue of whether to “Free Palestine,” but surely, we can reach a consensus on whether to feed Palestinians. The harrowing pictures and stories published in Friday’s Inquirer of people starving in Gaza defy moral ambiguity. The United States must do everything in its power to demand an end to the man-made mass starvation occurring in Gaza.

Kevin Ruggeri, Exton

Two recent Inquirer opinion pieces, an op-ed by Jack Hill about what it means to be an American under Trump and a column by Will Bunch about concentration camps, provide a stark depiction of the perilous state in which the United States currently finds itself. The banality of evil is a concept whereby ordinary people turn a blind eye to or actively participate in malicious acts. No society is immune to it, and it is now apparent in our treatment of immigrants, as well as in the indifference shown to the most vulnerable members of society, that many Americans, in service of cultural resentment, have succumbed to it in the Trump era.

Bunch makes the important point that the concentration camps in Nazi Germany were not originally established to exterminate Jews, but rather to detain political dissenters and others considered to be undesirable. However, when evil acts were not stopped in their tracks, they were repeatedly normalized and taken to the next level until atrocities occurred. Some may not think they themselves will be repressed, but there is no guarantee of that. It is vital that we make “Never again” a reality by speaking out now while we still can.

Bill Fanshel, Bryn Mawr

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