Violence in Gaza must end
Re: A telling and troubling contrast (Think Tank, May 2)
How many more mass graves need to be discovered outside hospitals, how many more children starved to death, before the Free Press stops publishing these apologist pro-Israel opinions? You can hide behind behind disclaimers that it’s just opinion that doesn’t represent the views of the Free Press all you want, but at a certain point you bear responsibility for disseminating these lies. I’m sure you have enough integrity to not publish holocaust-denying letters, it’s time to extend that to those that deny what Israel is doing in the Gaza Strip.
The latest hit from Penny Jones Square says that it can’t be a genocide because Israel is only trying to defeat Hamas, and that this accusation of genocide somehow reveals what the accusers are guilty of? What a joke. Israel has created a famine that threatens to starve all 2.3 million citizens of the Gaza Strip, they have destroyed every hospital, shut off the water supply, and forced over one million Gazan civilians into refugee camps in the border town of Rafah, where disease is now spreading rapidly. Sixteen thousand Palestinian children are dead since Oct. 7. Sixteen. Thousand. The WHO has called this “a war on children.”
The existence of Hamas does not excuse these actions, even remotely. Our complicity in these crimes must end. From arming the Israeli military and funding weapons development, to publishing defences of Israel’s actions and smearing protesters, it all must stop now.
Steven Osborne
Winnipeg
Campus crackdown deplorable
The violent repression of students on university campuses, who are protesting an ongoing genocide in Gaza — via indiscriminate bombing and starvation by the state of Israel — is abhorrent and should be condemned by any person that claims to uphold democracy. These students have the right to voice their moral and righteous opinions, whether you agree or not.
But I feel that if you disagree, you’re not being honest. We can all see, with our own eyes, exactly what is happening in Gaza. And “human shields” is not a get-out-of-jail-free card to flatten neighbourhoods, demolish nearly every hospital and every university, murder journalists, aid workers, doctors, poets. Even the bakeries are destroyed. You cannot just claim “human shields” when mass graves are found with the remains of hundreds of patient and doctors — some ziptied and executed while still hooked up to their IV drip — are found (look up Al Shifa and Nasser hospital massacres if you’re unaware). Would 35,000 dead “human shields” be acceptable if they weren’t Palestinian? Fifteen thousand of these “human shields” are children. Is that the world we should accept?
The barbarity and scale of the death and destruction, in such a short amount of time, all documented first hand by Palestinians in Gaza on social media, is absolutely catastrophic and cannot be justified in a just world.
I don’t think attempting to brutishly quell free speech with militarized police and national guards is going to make anyone think it can be. And it certainly won’t make those brave students, or the persistent — Palestinian- and Jewish-led — grassroots organizers and activists stop saying “Free Palestine.”
Aaron Bethnell
Winnipeg
Animal laws need update
Most Canadians are shocked to learn that there are no laws or government oversight regulating the treatment of animals on Canadian farms. There are only voluntary “codes” for farmers created by an industry group called the National Farm Animal Care Council (NFACC).
If undercover investigators and whistleblowers aren’t showing us the truth of what’s going on in the brutal and secretive animal agriculture industry, who will? Instead of trying to make the industry better for animals, it seems governments are just trying to be better at covering up animal cruelty.
Ontario is the first province to find out that the ag-gag laws they tried to put into place are unconstitutional. Alberta, Manitoba, P.E.I., and the federal government should strike down their ag-gag laws before a court forces them to.
Every undercover investigation that’s come out in the past decade shows overwhelmingly bad conditions for animals. The animal advocates who endanger their safety and mental health to expose these conditions are heroes we should be thanking, not jailing.
Our laws protecting farmed animals in Canada are some of the worst in the world. Why aren’t provincial and federal governments doing anything about this other than passing laws to protect the people profiting from abusing animals?
Some of the standard practices investigators have exposed on farms in Canada: slamming the heads of baby pigs against concrete as a way to cull them, male chicks in the egg industry being ground alive in macerators, pregnant pigs being kept in “gestation crates” so confining they can’t even turn around or lie down comfortably, calves in the dairy industry being torn away from their mothers, forever, right after being born.
Doug Krause
Winnipeg
Ageism in advertising
Re: Older workers, an underused resource (Think Tank, May 2)
It is true, there is ageism in the workplace. I want to change older workers to older people, since older people face ageism, not just older workers.
Look at advertising of products and services both younger and older people use (example coffee) and I only see younger people featured in these ads.
I look at websites of clothing store chains where older women shop, and I don’t see one older woman featured on their website. I contact these businesses to express my concern about the lack of older adults in their advertising, and the responses I get range from no response to thank you for your feedback.
Thank you for bringing awareness to this important issue of ageism.
Cindy Kelly
Winnipeg
Go easy on Jets
I read the letters that speak of the disappointment and disapproval regarding the Jets losing to the Colorado Avalanche.
I too am disappointed. I love the Jets. But dumping on them, to my mind, is not useful. They gave us a wonderful winter of hockey, and surely they are more disappointed than we the fans are, to have lost to the Avalanche. They may have lost the playoff series, but they have not lost my loyalty.
Thank you for a fun season, Winnipeg Jets!
Mary Ann Loewen
Winnipeg
In response to the letter by Joe Leven in which he beckons the Winnipeg Jets to replace GM, Kevin Chevldaoff; The last time I looked, it was hockey players on the ice, not general managers. Managers manage, and hockey players play hockey.
Or at least they’re supposed to.
If they don’t have the guts or the heart to play for the win, no manager can give it to them. If they want to skate around only giving half an effort and taking tantrum penalties like pampered millionaires, then they need to do some self reflecting instead of deflecting blame.
Randy Clinch
Winnipeg
