To the editor:

I do not know what the "mission" of former local resident Timothy Seidel is in the Middle East, but I do know the purpose of his writing is nothing more than propaganda sponsored by his hometown newspaper. This is the second column I have read where Seidel paints Jews as bloodthirsty land-grabbers intent on persecuting and brutally oppressing Palestinians who he portrays as "victims" seeking nothing more than peaceful coexistence with Israel. In his latest, he presents a Masa Tahu, a beleaguered Palestinian who remembers an image of Americans giving flour and shaking hands with Palestinians before, as Seidel states, "they became a military occupation force intent on controlling the region's natural resources." Seidel's Marxist views contain little truth of what caused the Palestinian plight.

Tahu continues to seek handouts from the United States when oil-rich Arab and Muslim nations do little to help the Palestinians (except arm them) including refusing to accept the self-displaced refugees of 1947 as Israel emerged in a land they had every right to live in.

Secondly, Tahu and his Palestinians have democratically elected the Hamas gang whose purpose is not to govern the Palestinians but to destroy Israel. Tahu is in the position he is in because he has ingested and digested this message of hate, supremacy and Islamic radicalism as the means of negotiating with Israel.

Like Seidel, I have images of Palestinians that I cannot shake. I remember them laughing and dancing in the street when 3,000 of my countrymen and women were murdered in the Twin Towers of New York. The ideology that supported that murderous attack is the same disease that is presently afflicting the Palestinians and has little to do with American foreign policy or with concessions from Israel short of its total destruction. Dave Silvia
Attleboro

Put fine young man
on Mansfield board

To the editor:

Please accept my endorsement of Bill Clemmey for Mansfield's Board of Selectmen. I have known Bill for over 40 years (yes, since he was a child). He is a fine dedicated young man and his educational and business background plus his genuine knowledge of town affairs make him the man I will vote for.

To my knowledge, he is the only candidate who faithfully attends the finance committee meetings, something that impresses me.

I sincerely urge you to cast your vote for Bill Clemmey.

Margarita Prestwich
Mansfield

Her scenario promotes
arming of criminals

To the editor:

I really enjoy reading letters from Anna DeMarinis because she has a sense of logic and rationality that makes me smile. Let me explain. After reading about the shooting deaths at Virginia Tech, DeMarinis promptly explained that we need less gun control because it is dangerous, her rationale being that if an armed citizen were there, he/she could have shot the shooter. She adds an anecdote about an armed, off-duty police officer who shot and killed a shooter in a mall (with help from other officers), explaining what would happen with armed citizens. She followed this explanation with, "When law-abiding citizens have guns, law-abiding citizens are safer and criminals are not." She assumes good guys with guns always kill the bad guys, not vice versa.

She left out some facts that may have confused us if they had remained. For instance, police officers are intensely trained with a handgun and when to use one; even so, they make mistakes and shoot the wrong people. They are also required to carry a firearm, even when off-duty. Therefore, police are not considered an armed citizen. In fact, police are very concerned about citizens carrying guns. Ask one sometime.

Maybe DeMarinis doesn't know that the shooter at Virginia Tech was legally allowed to buy and carry the guns he used; in fact he was an armed citizen. That is until he started shooting people; then he became an armed criminal very quickly. Unarmed citizens and criminals are better.

John DeWitt Wade
Norton

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