Attack on Hamas Raises Questions of Hypocrisy

Re “Blast Kills Hamas Official in Syria; Israel Denies Any Role,” Sept. 27: Why the cries of outrage as “Syrian officials urged President Bush to condemn Sunday’s attack,” as the story stated? It would be hypocritical for Bush to condemn Israel for going into neighboring Syria and killing a terrorist official involved in terrorist murders in Israel, when the U.S. went halfway around the world to kill Al Qaeda terrorist officials and Saddam Hussein’s sons. As Dennis Ross, President Clinton’s special envoy to the Middle East, said, “The Israelis have sent a message that there will be no sanctuary for Hamas in Damascus.”

Devon Showley

Cypress

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Israel allegedly used a car bomb to kill a Hamas official in Damascus. I suppose if the Palestinians did something comparable it would be denounced as terrorism by Western nations worldwide. Do we know how to spell “hypocrisy”?

Eric Parish

Vista

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The Sept. 28 story, “Losing Faith in the Intifada,” illustrates the moral depravity of the Palestinian terror campaign against Israel -- not so much because of what the Palestinians say, but rather because of what is missing.

Not once amid all the soul-searching about the rightness or wrongness of the intifada does anyone on the Palestinian side ask whether blowing up Israeli children in homes, schools, buses, discos and pizzerias was morally justifiable.

All the Palestinians seem to care about is whether they won or lost -- and because Israel found a way to stop the terror, the Palestinians now realize they have lost. An end to the terror may be at hand. But until the Palestinians confront their own moral failings in launching and enthusiastically supporting a war of inhuman brutality against innocent Israeli men, women, elderly and children, neither Israelis nor Palestinians will be much closer to a true and lasting peace.

Aharon Shifron-Ronnie

Concord