Sympathetic Portrait of Female Terrorist

Re “Palesinian Bomber Stood Out From the Rest,” Jan. 31: Your article affectionately describes this particular day’s suicide bomber with “doe-brown eyes and softly curled hair,” as one who acted out of “desperation” and, according to her proud, grieving relatives, a noble sense of patriotism. How desensitized are we readers expected to become to these continuing satanic acts, this one committed by a woman? Those Palestinian bombs have never discriminated as to the gender or age of the slaughtered and maimed civilian Israeli victims, and are really exploded from the blindest form of hatred.

Nonetheless, The Times generously dishes up the pathos, without bothering to remind us that Israel has never once targeted Palestinian civilians.

Franklin Berger

West Hills

*

I cried bitterly when I read your front-page article about the woman who blew herself up and injured more than 100 Israelis, killing one elderly man. My tears were not for the terrorist you glorified in your human-interest story or for her mother, whom you displayed in an enlarged photo on Page A5. My tears were for the “hundred” Israeli citizens--innocent youngsters, parents and elderly--designated only as “people” by your report.

Why don’t you interview some of the maimed children and teenagers who will bear the scars of terrorism throughout their lives? Interview the families who live every day with the trauma of terrorist bomber attacks while they go about their daily lives. Print a photograph of the young Israeli girl who lost her limbs and most of her family in a drive-by shooting on the West Bank. In short, glorify the victims, not the perpetrators, who don’t deserve to have their images on the front page.

Ruth Giden

Sherman Oaks

*

I’m so pleased to see that our courageous president is committed to doing “whatever it takes” to eliminate terrorism. I guess that means he’s finally going to stop aid to Israel until that country ends its cruel subjugation of the Palestinian land and people. It’s about time we did something serious about terrorism.

Paul S. Larudee

Richmond, Calif.