Lynn Rudmin Chong: Free speech, with humanitarian concerns the topic, is to be praised, not punished

To The Daily Sun,

I cannot forget the closing of a recent Sheila Kufert letter, latest of several defending Israel's genocide in Gaza. Sheila recommends a Youtube video that she says shows, "proper legal targeting processes" being followed by Israel. Then she writes denying genocide there, "Statistics show the number[s] of Gaza[n] population ha[ve] increased with 60,000 babies born since the beginning of the war. Hardly a genocide." So cold. So mind-numbing that she will write off 60,000 now-deceased-through-war humans of all ages, with a numbers-swap. Her attitude is: we see replacement babies. The unlivable situation in bombed-out Gaza hardly supports maternity-time good nutrition toward any baby's survival chances. Then, no shelter, clean water, hospitals left for delivery and care, exist. In what dream-world lives Sheila? I've not responded to her other letters. This one I cannot let go by.

Now, too, Donald Trump is strong-arming orders to make college students pay for speaking up against genocide of Gazans by Israel, those months of 2024 still with Joe Biden at our helm. I object. Free speech, with humanitarian concerns the topic of that campus-rallying time, is to be praised, not punished. Only a power-abuser would go after our upcoming generation with hurtful punishment as Trump, dictator to the core, wants now.

Lynn Rudmin Chong

Sanbornton