Letter to the editor: Palestine article biased
Tobias Dienstfrey is a math teacher at AHS.
I was disappointed by the A-Blast article in the September 3rd edition, “Gaza: The People of Palestine and the War Occurring Between Gaza and Israel”, which was biased against Israel.
The article unfairly labels Israel’s actions in the war as a “brutal aggression” but it fails to mention that the war was instigated by Hamas, an organization dedicated to destroying Israel, when it fired rockets at Israeli citizens. Israel had no choice but to react.
It is terrible that so many innocent Palestinians were killed in this conflict, but Hamas deliberately used its citizens as human shields to give Israel a “black-eye” in the media.
The article also includes a timeline which states, “The UN successfully passes a plan to separate Western Palestine into two states.”
The Israelis accepted this plan; however, the Palestinian leadership along with the countries surrounding Israel including Egypt, Syria and Jordan, rejected the UN’s two-state partition plan and attacked.
Israel survived that war and has since signed peace accords with Egypt and Jordan. Israel has tried in vain to negotiate peace with the Palestinians, including the 2000 Camp David Accords between Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat, but the Palestinian leader rejected yet another two-state solution.
Many of Israel’s citizens long for peace and would gladly accept a two-state solution. However, peace will not be achieved as long as organizations such as Hamas refuse to accept Israel’s right to exist.
Tristan Nazario • Jan 15, 2026 at 7:18 pm
It’s kind of hard to say that hamas is using civilians as human shields when: one, there is no substantial evidence other than faked phone call faked by Israel and an Arial photo of a school, and a mosque on the IDF’s websiteal claiming there is a hamas controlled tunnel in between them.
2, Israel use civilians as human shields, there have been pictures of IDF personal strapping Palestinians to the hoods of their vehicles.
The claim that hamas are the agitators isn’t wrong per say, but intellectually dishonest. Starting the conflicts time line on October 7th, is like starting world war 2’s time line in 1942 with the bombing of pearl harbor, technically it is correct but if you dont talk about the events leading up to it you get a distorted view of reality. Before October 7th Israeli-palestinian tensions were extremely high. Israeli snipers fired into a crowd of peaceful protesters and still occupied the gaza strip. That being said Hamas may not have been the agitators but the escalators, commiting horrific war crimes. I understand that you may only have a view of the conflict from what the news reports post-Oct. 7th. This, ofcourse, doesn’t take into account 80 year of vicious fighting often without a specific purpose but just becuase of hate festering and growing causing senseless violence and continuing the cycle of violence.
Hamas and Israel will be no more some day, but peace is a concept that humans will always hold in their hearts. Chosing a side is chosing to continue generations of hate a violence.