‘Thank goodness’ for Chris Van Hollen; Sun readers come to senator’s defense on Israel | READER COMMENTARIES

Sen. Chris Van Hollen is trying to save lives

We write to support Sen. Chris Van Hollen in the wake of a scurrilous attack by Rabbi Jonathan A. Seidemann (“Van Hollen is failing the Jewish community,” June 2). The senator is trying to save lives. He believes, as do we, that a Palestinian life has equal worth to a Jewish life. Rabbi Seidemann’s attitude seems to be that Jewish lives are more valuable than Palestinian lives and that any Marylander who is not on his side is wrong and immoral. Clearly, this is a false statement. Just a few months ago, over 450 Jewish Marylanders, including 10 Rabbis, published a public letter giving their full support to Senator Van Hollen.

There is a horrendous conflict going on in Israel and Palestine about land and about citizenship rights. Violent conflicts like this are, nevertheless, subject to international law. Since the United States is arming Israel, Israel’s actions are also subject to U.S. laws that bar aid to nations that block humanitarian aid or use U.S. weapons as part of a campaign of collective punishment or who do not sufficiently protect civilians during combat.

On Oct. 7, Hamas did not adhere to the laws of war when it attacked Israel. This fact does not allow Israel to violate those laws, but Israel is not protecting noncombatants.

Sen. Van Hollen is working to end the violence that has seen over 36,000 Palestinians die — about 30 times the number of Israelis who have been killed. He is working to pressure Israel to stop blocking water, food, and medicine to relieve the suffering of two million Palestinians in Gaza.

President Biden has complained about the killing and starving of Palestinian civilians by Israel, and he has threatened to stop some weapons shipments, but he has not yet applied sufficient pressure. We must hope that the current proposal will lead to a cessation of violence, an end to famine, the restoration of medical care and an eventual agreement whereby Palestinians and Israelis will have equal rights and peace.

— Ronda Cooperstein and Malachy Kilbride are co-conveners of Baltimore Peace Action. Ellen Barfield represents Veterans for Peace, the Phil Berrigan Memorial Chapter. Lynn Robinson is with Baltimore Women in Black. And Janice Sevre-Duszynska and Max Obuszewski represent the Baltimore Nonviolence Center.

Chris Van Hollen has done an admirable job

Last  I’ve read, we pledge allegiance to the United States of America, not to Israel or any other country. Chris Van Hollen has done an admirable job for Maryland and the United States. He did not deserve that inflammatory, character assassination in the June 1 issue. I stand with Chris.

— Agnes Pavlick, Linthicum

Van Hollen ‘right as rain’ to demand ceasefire

“Rabbi” Jonathan Seidemann bemoans American Jews facing “a painful wake-up call” these past eight months, but this “teacher” is himself clearly sound asleep at the wheel. By sharp contrast, our imminently senior U.S. Sen. Van Hollen has his eyes wide open and his conscience fully intact here. He is right as rain to demand a full ceasefire and the stoppage of our misused arms shipments and deserves our fullest support, including from our long-serving Israel booster, retiring Senator Ben Cardin.

Van Hollen’s position on the Israeli-Hamas conflict is the only one that can possibly staunch the surging tsunami of worldwide revulsion that is the only moral response possible to the leveling of Gaza and the forced homelessness, starvation and denial of medical care to its captive Palestinian populace.

No ethical person can condone the murderous Hamas rampage of Oct. 7, 2023. One can understand what led up to it, but massacring some 1,200 people and kidnapping some 240 more crosses everyone’s “red line” — or it should. But similarly, no ethical person can ignore the very deliberate destruction of the entire 140 square miles of Gaza with tanks, artillery, bombs guided by AI-informed, human-dispatched drones and a massively equipped army.

When one targets hospitals, schools, residential apartment complexes and all other civilized infrastructure for 200-plus days and counting, indiscriminately killing some 36,000 Hamas combatants, IDF soldiers, medical providers, Israeli hostages, humanitarian aid workers and thousands upon thousands of civilians, predominantly women and children, one crosses that same “red line.”  And when one decimates the electricity and fuel supply, destroys all water purification plants and health care facilities, blocks food and medical supplies, and holds the entire population of 2.1 million, now barely surviving, hostage, walled in to a disease-infested graveyard of ruins, it goes well beyond massacre; it is undeniably genocide.

No moral person can possibly justify genocide. Hamas leadership is responsible for the October 7th massacre, but the Revisionist Zionist government of Israel — not Jews broadly — is responsible for this genocide. That it is happening after decades of annual multi-billion U.S. taxpayer dollar payments for Israeli defense aid, and billions more in supplements, makes every one of us complicit in this genocide and morally obliged to call for an end to it immediately.

Perhaps the rabbi has forgotten his Exodus [21:24]: “Eye for eye, tooth for tooth” — a warning against rage and vengeance.  If, as Gandhi reportedly extrapolated, an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind, how much blinder do 30 eyes for an eye leave us?  Ceasefire! Now!

— Louis Curran, Baltimore

Maryland Jewish community not in lockstep

I am extremely disturbed by the letter of Jonathan A. Seidemann in which he tears down the good character of a man of peace — our very well-respected Sen Chris Van Hollen. As a Catholic, I realize that we are living in an era where we can expect little moral guidance from religious leaders as they have other priorities. This is at least the third letter that self-proclaimed leaders of the Jewish community have had printed in The Baltimore Sun.

After the horrific attack by Hamas on Oct 7 the world wrapped its arms around Israel and the Jewish people. Eight months later the mood of decent people has changed as we have observed the nearly daily atrocities committed by Israel against the Palestinian people. There is no moral justification for this over-the-top brutal behavior. Children are being starved and aid workers have been murdered. Israel has terrible immoral and corrupt leadership. This should be a lesson to us of the importance of electing moral leaders.

Rabbi Seidemann wants us to believe that the Jewish community in Maryland is walking in lockstep with one another. We know that this is not true. Thank you to Senator Van Hollen for your great job of representing the decent people of Maryland and for your hard work in helping to stabilize a very difficult region of the Middle East.

— Edward McCarey McDonnell, Baltimore

Rabbi does not speak for me

Rabbi Jonathan A. Seidemann, who recently wrote a letter to the editor critical of U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen, does not speak for all Jews and he certainly does not speak for me.

Thank goodness for our Senator Van Hollen, who has the integrity to publicly call out our ally, Israel, for using weapons and money supplied by the United States in ways that violate international and U.S. law. What Israel is doing is illegal. More fundamental is the immorality of the collective punishment of Palestinians, using U.S. money and weapons to kill over 36,000 people so far, mostly women and children. Over half of the population is under 18 in Gaza and was not alive when Hamas was elected in 2006. It is heartbreaking to witness the suffering of children: their deaths, their injuries, their trauma.

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Israel was withholding water, food and electricity to all of Gaza, many of us realized that the horror of the massacre on Oct. 7 was being compounded by the indefensible collective punishment of Gaza including the young, the old and the disabled. Criticism of the Israeli government is not antisemitic nor anti-Jewish. The Judaism that was taught to me by my rabbi of blessed memory, Rabbi Murray Saltzman, a champion of civil rights and human rights, was that the most basic Jewish value is: pekuach nefesh. Even before land, he explained, is “life.”

Yet according to many experts including groups within Israel, “Israel has been committing the crime of starvation under international law in Gaza.” Israel has killed more than 500 physicians and health care workers like the head orthopedic physician at Al Shifa Hospital who died after four months in Israeli detention. Journalists and humanitarian workers have been killed in such high numbers to suggest that they have been targeted. Israel Defense Forces police look the other way when Israeli settlers try to block food trucks from reaching the starving. That cannot be what it is to be a good Jew.

For those who care about the future of Israel, a government that allows this kind of behavior does more harm than any of those of us who are trying to speak out against a government that has abandoned law and common morality in its waging of war. Thank you, Senator Van Hollen. You are a friend to many Jews and many who care about Israel.

— Gwen DuBois, Baltimore