Letters to the Editor | Sept. 27, 2024

I am writing to express my grave concern about the deeply flawed letter on the death toll in the war in Gaza. Its inflammatory title, “Staggering numbers,” reflects its distorted and antisemitic viewpoint. The letter fallaciously compares the number of deaths on 9/11 to the number of deaths in Gaza, thus juxtaposing an unprovoked attack by a terrorist entity with a retaliatory war by the legitimate army of a United States ally.

By choosing to invoke this false comparison, the writer implies the fabricated — and, frankly, antisemitic — narrative that the unprovoked 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States are comparable to Israel’s war against terrorism in Gaza — a war which Israel did not start, on a battleground it did not choose. This writer disseminates the pernicious narrative that al-Qaeda, a despicable 9/11 terrorist perpetrator, is equivalent to the Israel Defense Forces, the army of the only democracy in the Middle East.

The letter writer should have compared the two terrorist attacks: 9/11 vs. Oct. 7. If the writer had done a quick fact-check, they would have discovered that the 10/7 attack resulted in the deaths of 0.01% of the Israeli population, which, in a country of less than 10 million, was as if about 40,000 Americans were killed — 13 times more than the number of al-Qaeda victims on 9/11. Letter writers are entitled to different and varied opinions, but they are not entitled to present misleading arguments.

Katherine Kaplan, Mount Laurel

According to The Inquirer, Temple University, where I spent 50 years as a graduate student, professor, and administrator, is investigating Students for Justice in Palestine for “targeting a group of individuals because of their Jewish identity.” The cause of the investigation was a speech given outside of Temple’s Hillel Foundation building during a demonstration at the beginning of the semester. My own investigation has found this accusation baseless.

In a transcript of the speech, the student says — in no uncertain terms — that their action is specific to Hillel’s support for the state of Israel, whose actions have consistently displaced, incarcerated, and killed Palestinians and have destroyed the cultural, academic, and religious institutions in Gaza. For the university to find that Hillel students were targeted as individuals based on their Jewish identity and ancestry, it would have to credibly assert that political support for Israel is inextricable from Jewish religion, identity, or ancestry. But it is hard to claim that Zionism — a political nationalist ideology from the 19th century — and Israel — a nation-state from the 20th century — can be inherent parts of a religion that precedes them by millennia.

Indeed, for myself, as a religious and cultural Jew, pursuing justice, repairing the world, and believing that all human life is sacred have always been fundamental Jewish values, and Israel has sadly failed to live up to them. For me, supporting the state of Israel thus contradicts my Jewish values. But I would never accuse other Jews of harassing me based on my identity simply for disagreeing with me. And I would expect Temple and Hillel — in their pursuits of civic dialogue — to uphold the same ideal.

Rebecca Alpert, Philadelphia

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