June 29, 2026 Editor, The News-Gazette: I was deeply unsettled by the propaganda published in Mike Lowry’s column on June 24.
He opens by using the occasion of the surprise attack by Japan on Pearl Harbor as the analogy to describe the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023.
The attack was horrific and should not have happened. But to imply that it was unprovoked when Israel the state has been encouraging violent encroachment on Palestinian lands for nearly a century and treating Palestinians under apartheid conditions for decades is a bald-faced lie.
Lowry uses this analogy apparently to justify the number of deaths the IDF has caused in Gaza since that date. He notes that the estimate “of 67,000 being killed in Gaza does not tell how many were Hamas and how many were civilians.” And he doesn’t seem to care. Mr. Lowry has apparently bought into the delusion that Palestinian equals terrorist. Perhaps he thinks it’s justified that universities in Gaza have been razed. Or that hospitals have been bombed. Or that people –children – are starving to death and dying of infection even now in 2026 because Israel restricts food and medical aid.
Lowry touts the assumption that to be opposed to what Israel is and has been doing makes one antisemitic. And that the “New Left” is antisemitic because they no longer want American taxpayers to support a regime conducting a genocide.
But I think Mr. Lowry underestimates the conscience and intelligence of N-G readers. I think that, more and more, Americans are seeing through Israel’s PR armor and realizing they don’t want to be complicit. Perhaps they are remembering their lessons in history class, the ones where they thought, “how could the Germans have just stood there and let it happen?” and deciding they don’t want to just stand there and let it happen, too. KIM ANDERSON Lexington
