To the Editor of the Middleburg Eccentric:

In the July edition of your paper you published an opinion essay titled, "Hypocrisy" concerning the current Israeli/Hamas war that in Gaza.

The article contained so many factual misstatements, omissions of relevant facts and unsupported assumptions about Netanyahu's motivations that it failed to meet minimum journalistic standards and should not have been included in your newspaper. The essay was no more than a Hamas propaganda piece.

Here is a highlight list of the facts of which the author is either ignorant or ignores:

1. While Egypt has closed its border with Gaza, it is not in the power of Israel to open it and such a demand has no place in the negotiations between Israel and Hamas.

2. Israel does not occupy Gaza and has had no settlements there since 2005, when it unilaterally withdrew from the territory and turned over the territory to the Palestinian Authority.

3. The author of your article states that "Their (Hamas) demands are not that radical." It only demands the destruction of the State of Israel. Hamas has been labeled a terrorist organization by the US, the European Union, Canada, Egypt, Jordan and Japan. In a July interview with Charlie Rose, Khaled Meshaal, the leader of Hamas declared that they consider Israel an occupier of Palestine (even though the state was established in 1948 by the UN) and that they could never coexist with Israel as a Jewish state.

4. Hamas and its affiliates have fired thousands of rockets into Israel since 2002. On July 31, the New York Times reported that 2,750 rockets have been fired into Israel from Gaza since the current phase of the conflict began in July. The rockets are indiscriminately aimed at civilian targets and threaten 5 million of Israel's citizens, both Jews and Arabs.

5. Gaza's area is 150 square miles, slightly smaller than Clarke County, VA (178 square miles) which in no way justifies hiding rocket launchers in schools and homes. The UN has confirmed that Hamas had rockets hidden in two of the UN schools.

6. The Israelis have discovered 35 terror tunnels that intrude into Israeli territory from Gaza. These tunnels are intended to permit Hamas to conduct raids into Israel to kill and capture Israeli citizens and soldiers. They were built with the humanitarian aid supplied by the UN and other world powers which were intended for schools, hospitals and public works.

This is just a short list of the errors and omissions in the article. The article could only have been written by someone who was blinded by bias or ignorance. A comprehensive list of the policy and military misdeeds by both sides of the conflict is not warranted here nor would it be germane to purpose of this letter: to correct the fatally flawed arguments put forth in the article.