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Re. Memorial for Israeli soldiers tomorrow, North York Mirror, Aug. 13

I was distraught at the comments by UJA Federation's vice-chair Alan Winer in a recent article in The Mirror.

Upon mentioning the then-upcoming memorial for the two dead Israeli soldiers whose remains were returned to Israel from Hezbollah, Winer made a series of disturbing assertions.

He first claims the soldiers were captured in an unprovoked attack.

Israel has been kidnapping and killing Lebanese civilians for years even after their past invasion and occupation of Lebanon.

In response to the capture of these two Israeli soldiers, Israel practically destroyed Lebanon. More than 1,000 Lebanese died and countless more have died in Lebanon as a result of the destruction of the national infrastructure.

Winer fails to mention any of this.

It is a tragedy that these soldiers died, of course, but it is sheer hypocrisy to see a memorial in this city for the Israeli soldiers and not the 1,000-plus Lebanese, most of whom were civilians, that were killed.

Jesse M. Zimmerman