To the Editor: Re “Biden Offers Terse Rebuke of Israeli Leader’s Efforts” (news article, Sept. 3): President Biden says Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not doing enough to free the hostages. My question is this: Is he doing all he can to pressure Mr.
Netanyahu? Not as far as we know. The obvious lever he has is U.S. weaponry.
If the government of Israel is doing harm to Israel, as many of us think, then some discussion of consequences for following a dangerous policy is appropriate. As far as we know, there has been little hint of that. Jack M.
BloomGary, Ind. To the Editor: With a one-word rebuke — “No” — when asked if Benjamin Netanyahu is doing enough to secure a cease-fire, President Biden has, once again, emboldened Hamas and prolonged the war. When Israel’s most important ally undermines its bargaining position in this way, the message the Hamas leadership receives is a chilling one: Stand your ground, concede nothing, Israel has lost U.S.
support, and time is on your side. Kenneth A. MargolisBristol, Maine To the Editor: President Biden understands that the goal of Israel’s invasion of Gaza involves much more than freeing the hostages.
Hamas has promised many more terrorist massacres of Israeli civilians on the brutal scale of Oct. 7 — which Israel simply cannot afford. The goal of this campaign is to completely debilitate Hamas’s capabilities to carry out its genocidal promises — promises it proved on Oct.
7 it is fully capable of keeping. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s insistence that, in any cease-fire, Hamas must be deprived of retaining strategic positions — such as the Philadelphi Corridor — is essential to the end that Hamas have no further military capabilities to terrorize and massacre Israeli civilians. It is as important as, if not more important than, Israel’s other essential goal of freeing the remaining hostages.
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