There are so many problems with Daniel A. Brown’s My Turn, “The blood libel of Zionists, Holocaust” [Recorder, March 12] that one hardly knows where to begin. But let’s start with this paragraph. The writer laments, “I’ve written numerous My Turns about the history of Israel-Palestine, but I might as well be whistling in the dark. The final blow came when my report about Jewish women and girls being mass raped and sexually mutilated by Hamas was met by local activists with silence, denial, gaslighting and an outright lie from a local “peace” center. Apparently the #MeToo movement ends at the Israeli border.”

One might wonder why Mr. Brown didn’t also complain about “local activists” denying reports of “beheaded babies” along with the reports of “mass rapes.” Oh, wait a second, it turned out that the story of the “beheaded babies” was a fabrication, a concoction of an Israeli organization named Zaka. The discovery that it was fabricated happened after it had been spread all over by our mass media and repeated by President Joe Biden. But guess what, the charges of “mass rapes by Hamas” are coming under scrutiny and they may also turn out to be fabrications.

But there is more to this story. It turns out that once again the source for many of these reports of mass rape was Zaka, a non-governmental rescue and recovery organization in Israel. If you think about it, it makes sense. If you want to carry out a genocide as Israel is attempting to do against the Palestinians, you need protection in the court of public opinion. And what better way to protect yourself than to lie about the victims of the genocide and portray them as monsters. Maybe it doesn’t matter to the Israeli authorities if these reports are disproven in the end.

On this point, for now, I will let Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have the last word. There is a report from Nov. 23, 2023 from the prime minister’s office, that Mr. Netanyahu had had a meeting with Zaka.

According to the report Mr. Netanyahu told Zaka ” ... we need to buy time, which we also buy by turning to world leaders and to public opinion. You have an important role in influencing public opinion, which also influences leaders.”

Dr. E. Martin Schotz

Cummington