Dear Editor,

No one can claim righteousness in the Israeli-Hamas War. The only moral equivalence is that both sides are horribly wrong.

A pox on everyone that is claiming “their right” of vengeance by slaughtering anyone, especially children.

Israel has a right to seek justice and defense for the murder of over 1,400 (the biggest mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust) and the hostage taking of over 200. According to Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank: “it (October 7th) was a modern day pogrom planned and designed calculated to kill innocent Jewish civilians.”

The Gazans’ can rightly demand justice for the wrongful killing reprisal by the Israeli war machine of over 8,000, mostly Gaza civilians, including over 3,000 children (including the six year old Muslim child in Chicago). Israel’s control and wrongfully stealing land and property by settlers from Palestinians, treating Palestinians as second class people, and Israel controlling the al Al-Aqsa Mosque are intolerable to Palestinians — as they should be.

Both sides have been brutal in their horrible, murderous war, which will never achieve anything. Only a peaceful two-state solution is the way out of this awful war.

I can’t stand the hurt from hearing any more grief from mourning families.

A pox on the leaders of both sides!

Bill Bryant

St. Clairsville