After Memorial Day, a different war

This letter to the editor by P4P Board Member Susanne Hoder appeared in the Sun Newspapers of Port Charlotte, Punta Gorda and Englewood on May 31, 2024.

My father and uncle are among the patriots we honor this week.  Both fought in World War II, which cost my Uncle Fred his life when his plane was shot down over Berlin, and nearly cost my father his feet, frozen in the foxholes of Europe.  Both men believed in our country, fought  for her freedom and liberated Jewish victims of Hitler’s ethnic cleansing. They would be horrified at the ethnic cleansing of  Palestinians that  began shortly after that war and has exploded into full-blown genocide today.

To honor their sacrifice, a war against misinformation is needed. Americans need to know the current conflict did not begin on October 7th. Decades of massacres, bombings, and persecution of Palestinians had occurred. Jewish Israelis had brazenly taken land belonging to Palestinians and passed laws declaring their primacy. They routinely kidnapped Palestinians, including  children, from their beds in the middle of the night and imprisoned them without charge. They attacked holy sites. This aggression led to terrible attacks against Israelis by Hamas, which accelerated Israel’s already brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and Gaza.

It’s not easy to confront the lies that groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee promote. Yet like my father in the foxhole, I believe in my country. I believe that Americans  armed with facts will live up to our founders’ ideals that “all humans are created equal” and that freedom is an inalienable right for all.