To The Editor:
Regarding the opinion column on the Oct. 25 issue of The Gazette by Otto Hernandez.
Opinion based on facts is a valued thing in a democracy But based on distorted facts and presented as information is misleading.
The attack on Israel by Hamas was an indisputably dastardly act, but to blame a political party in the U.S. for its partisan and biased-at-best withdrawal from Afghanistan was negotiated by the Trump administration in Feb. 2020 with the Taliban without the knowledge of the Afghan government. The debacle, which followed, was that the Taliban did not keep their promise and attacked the retreating troops.
Iran has not received a single cent of its money, which is legally theirs and which we agreed to release, imposing on them conditions of how to spend it on food and humanitarian purposes. The Gaza Strip is a tightly controlled area where Israel controls the supply of food, water, electricity and all imports. So to say that the weapons we left in Afghanistan were sent there is either wrong or shows the incompetence of that policy. While there is no justification for violence a population of two-and-a-half million lives in such conditions in an area of 140 square miles, with the young people having no hopes for their future are easy prey to recruitment by extremists.
Laying blame on the Ivy league schools for not coming out with an official viewpoint conforming to that of big donors, and blaming them for allowing young minds to see both sides of a complicated problem, is coercion. Allow only thoughts which conform to our views or we will not donate and punish your graduates by not employing them is conditional donation and not philanthropy.
Biren Tandan
Hammonton, N.J.