Hamas attacks
The column describes a tragic situation that understandably evokes sympathy but completely misplaces the blame. Hamas’s brutal attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, launched this war, breaking a ceasefire and committing acts of violence so horrific that Israel could not return to the pre-Oct. 7 paradigm.
The history is tragic. Palestinian leaders have rejected peace offers, including independence, repeatedly. After Israel left Gaza, Palestinians could have built a thriving society. Instead, Hamas seized power in a bloody coup and has abused Gaza ever since. Beyond denying basic rights, there are reports of Hamas stealing humanitarian aid to build weapons and tunnels, using schools and hospitals as military sites, and attacking Israel with thousands of rockets. The Oct. 7 attacks were the breaking point.
Israel is at war with Hamas; the war will end when Hamas — a terror group — releases the hostages and puts down its weapons. Hamas does not care about the people of Gaza but only about the perpetuation of its own power. Nowhere else is there a war where the victim could end it by agreeing to stop fighting. Only that will bring hope once again to the people of Gaza and Israel.
David Leon, United Jewish Federation of Tidewater president, Virginia ӽ紫ý
DOGE cuts
I do not know if the right programs are being cut by the Department of Government Efficiency or the correct federal employees are being let go. I do know that COVID has been over for years so COVID programs should have already been stopped. I also know that when a country is more than $36 trillion in debt and operates on borrowed money because it spends more than it takes in. That is irresponsible.
Federal spending must be cut wherever it can be. Helping people is a good thing, but not if you borrow the money to do it and commit financial suicide. Former President Bill Clinton knew it. He is the last president who balanced the U.S. budget. He also cut 400,000 federal employees and changed many federal programs.
We are sitting on a financial atomic bomb; it must be stopped before it explodes. It may be painful, but not as painful as what happens if we continue on the current course.
Volpe Boykin, Carrsville
U.S. identity
As an elementary school student when John F. Kennedy was president in the early 1960s, we started every morning by giving our full voice to the Pledge of Allegiance and, to contrast the U.S. with the communist Soviet Union during the Cold War, our teachers taught constitutional democracy with reverence. Americans at that time agreed that this was our national identity, and it didn’t matter which political party we belonged to.
Today, how we perceive national identity does seem to depend in part on which party we belong to. Those opposed to President Donald Trump think his executive orders are blatantly unconstitutional, yet the president’s supporters either don’t think so or don’t care. Republicans who ranted about former President Barack Obama’s “executive overreach” and former President Joe Biden’s supposed politicization of his executive branch now seem comfortable with Trump clearly doing those same things. Why the contradiction?
It appears that a good portion of Trump loyalists prefer an authoritarian president who defines our national identity through Christian principles, rather than what they see as America’s leftward cultural drift. Historians agree, though, that the framers intended the Constitution and not the Bible as the nation’s playbook.
America’s 250th birthday is in 2026. There is no more important discussion for Americans to have than to arrive at some common ground on who we are as a people.
David Meyerholz, Virginia ӽ紫ý
