Kudos to Press Herald staff writer John Terhune for his excellent article on the Maine Gaza Solidarity Flotilla, a welcome departure from typical mainstream media coverage that often neglects, distorts or lies about what is happening in Gaza and the West Bank.

I offer a few comments. First, I think demonstrators who took part in the flotilla did so to protest genocide, not “Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people.” For almost two years, Palestinians have been murdered, starved, tortured and ethnically cleansed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) at the behest of Israel’s right-wing Zionist government, with the support of Israel’s citizenry Israel’s actions need to be accurately named: “genocide,” not “treatment.”

Second, the exact number of Israeli citizens killed by Hamas or other resistance fighters on Oct. 7, 2023, versus those killed by the IDF is not known. What is known is that some number of soldiers and civilians were killed by Israeli forces carrying out orders from senior officers to implement the Hannibal Directive, “a controversial policy wherein the IDF works to stop hostages from being taken at all costs ….”

Finally, the term “terrorist,” as in “terrorist attack,” is ambiguous. Definitions differ based on personal conviction, bias, political advantage, attempt to gain power, etc. I consider Hamas to be a Palestinian resistance group, part of a resistance movement, not a terrorist organization. Hamas is fighting for Palestinian self-determination, against foreign occupation, against the Zionist settler-colonial project, “Israel.”

Connie Jenkins
Belfast