Letters to the Editor | July 30, 2025

I’ll say it straight. Over 1,000 people (human beings!) have been killed in Gaza just trying to obtain food. These are not warning shots. There is a concerted effort to eliminate every man, woman, and child in Gaza. This is known as genocide. It has happened before. But it is happening now — and it can be stopped. The U.S. can stop sending munitions to Israel as long as the Israeli government keeps killing civilians. Yes, Israel has a right to exist. But so do Gazans. Unarmed, starving people are not a threat to Israel. The actions of Israel will go down in history as another Holocaust. Will the U.S. do anything to stop this? If not, we are complicit.

Margaret Zanoni, Edgewater Park

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If you see the pictures of starving children in Gaza — their ribs showing, their arms and legs like sticks, their eyes bulging out of their heads — and don’t feel horrified, then there is something seriously wrong with you. What if your children were reduced to skeletons, slowly dying a tortuous death? How would you feel? The World Food Program says the food crisis in Gaza has reached “new and astonishing levels of desperation, with a third of the population not eating for multiple days in a row.”

Maddeningly, our taxes are paying for this. We send millions of dollars in military aid to Israel. Face the truth: Israel is blocking humanitarian aid and causing innocent children to starve to death. These children did nothing wrong. How many have to starve before the vengeance stops? Call your legislators and demand that this nightmare ends. In Pennsylvania, it’s Sens. John Fetterman and Dave McCormick. You can find your representative at www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative.

Claire Gawinowicz, Oreland

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On the front page of the July 25 edition of The Inquirer there is a heartbreaking photo of a Palestinian mother in Gaza cradling her starving child. On the inside of the same edition there is a story in which our governor, Josh Shapiro, expresses concern over what he perceives as the lack of moral leadership of New York Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. Shapiro is quoted as saying, “Leaders have a responsibility to speak and act with moral clarity.” I couldn’t agree more.

We are in desperate need for our leaders to speak with moral clarity and, in one voice, condemn Israel’s forced starvation of Gaza’s children and the killing of more than 1,000 Palestinians trying to reach food distribution sites. How, as a society, have we gotten to the point where this is tolerable or acceptable? Shapiro’s statement that, “There are policies of the Netanyahu government that I don’t support” is incredibly weak in the face of the barbarity and savagery of the atrocities being perpetuated by the Israeli government against the Palestinian people.

Deborah McIlvaine, Philadelphia

It was never a secret that America’s first president and a third of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, including its author Thomas Jefferson, enslaved people. At the turn of this century, the National Park Service decided to update the Independence Mall area and highlight the President’s House. Advocates like Charles Blockson and Michael Coard boldly raised their voices against the project until the Park Service agreed to recognize the important roles that George and Martha Washington’s slaves played in their lives.

Today, Independence Park visitors learn about these slaves’ lives, their basement home, Washington’s system of slave rotation to avoid Pennsylvania’s six-month-residency manumission law, and the courage of Oney Judge and Hercules Posey to escape from the Washingtons. Washington’s slave-owning must be acknowledged along with his important role in winning American independence from Britain and establishing presidential precedents that have survived until now. As abhorrent as it may be, we cannot obfuscate the Washingtons enslaving people, but we must learn all our history, good and bad, lest America become a country whose leaders are worshiped as flawless demigods.

Paul L. Newman, Merion Station

Those of us who did not, would not, and do not support Donald Trump’s initiative to rewrite our nation’s history might be able to save a piece of what he’s hell-bent on destroying. We travel to and visit historic landmarks, parks, and museums. Some places are just plaques on a wall or street signs, and so far, they are still here for our edification. But soon they will be gone, destroyed or otherwise erased in an effort to change facts significant to our history — much to the chagrin of Americans who actually respect and learn from them.

But (and this comes from a bit of a Luddite) we have the power and ability to preserve our true, messy, and remaining national history. Wherever you visit — no matter how innocuous or grand — take your cell phone, camera, sketch pad, and/or tablet and document, document, document what you see and observe and be sure to store the evidence. We can all be documentarians who capture what will potentially be lost. And when the reign of terror is finally over, it can be our archival recordings that are used to rebuild our heritage.

Judith DiBiase Bennis, Kennett Square

There is a terrifying history behind the phrase “globalize the intifada” that New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani refuses to condemn. In 2000, Israel offered the Palestinians a state born in peace on virtually all of the land in dispute, including a capital in Jerusalem. The Palestinian Authority rejected Israel’s offer, and Palestinian terrorist groups led by Hamas — whose charter vows to “obliterate” Israel and kill Jews everywhere — responded by massacring more than 1,000 Israeli civilians, including children in homes, schools, buses, discos, malls, and pizzerias, and entire families at a communal Passover Seder. This was the “intifada” whose “globalization” Mamdani refuses to condemn. It set the stage for Hamas’ rapes, kidnappings, and massacres of Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023. Gov. Josh Shapiro deserves praise for condemning Mamdani’s moral failure on antisemitic hate.

Stephen A. Silver, San Francisco

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As the Democrats find their path forward, and New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani represents a fresh approach that resonated in the city, am I the only voter interested in getting Gov. Josh Shapiro and Mamdani together to discuss opportunities to combine forces for what could be a larger, new and improved political tent? Their messages are not that far apart. Shapiro should show his leadership, reach out to Mamdani, the politician generating excitement, and discuss the state of our party to win in 2026 and 2028!

Susan Henick, Wyndmoor

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