Letter from Richard Sherman to The Guardian, October 6, 2025 re the lies of Diana Buttu, a Hamas supporter

Dear Letter to the Editor:

Diana Buttu and so many other Hamas supporters exist in a world without causes, only effects,  in order to vilify the Jewish people of Israel for defending themselves in a seven front existential war. ("A Magic Pill Made Israel's Violence Invisible. We Need to Stop Swallowing It").

As Ms. Buttu makes overwhelmingly clear in her anti Israel screed, October 7, 2023 is just another date on the calendar for her absolutely no different than October 6, 2023 or October 5, 2023 in any way, shape or form.

The reality is that in a surprise attack that violated an EXISTING  cease fire on October 6, ... 3800 Hamas sociopaths and 2200 Gazan civilian willing executioners murdered, raped, beheaded, eviscerated, disemboweled,  and machined gunned as was done at Babi Yar in 1941 over 1200 Jews from all over the world on October 7. ..A Cause...

On October 7 over 250 Jewish civilians including infants, small children, young girls and Holocaust survivors were brutally kidnapped, dozens since sexually assaulted and murdered..The few remaining surviving Jewish kidnap victims many held hostage by Gazan civilians are being intentionally starved to death as was done to the Jews at Bergen Belsen... A Cause..

See also:"Ordinary Gazans' and Oct 7: Hatred Among the Population and the Massacre", Professor Jeffrey Herbst, former President of Colgate University and Chairman of the Department of Politics at Princeton University, New York Daily News, 11/14/23).

The cause of Oct 7 includes the fact that hundreds of Jewish women, girls, infants and Holocaust survivors were sexually mutilated with their breasts sliced off and their vaginas sliced wide open as  Muhammad's kidnapping and sexual enslavement of 1000 Jewish girls and women in Medina in 627  as described in the Koran was emulated....A Cause... The mutilation and death throes of these Jewish women and girls captured on cell phone video by Hamas sociopaths and  Gazan civilian willing executioners and now available on the Internet for Hamas and their supporters including those like Ms. Buttu and in the mainstream media, politics and academia to be titillated by.

( See: "Screams Without Words': How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct 7", NY Times, 12/28/23);

Evidence Points to Systemic Use of Rape and Sexual Violence by Hamas in Oct 7 Attacks," Beth McKernan, The Guardian, 1/24/24; "U.N. Team Finds Grounds to Support Reports of Sexual Violence in Hamas Attacks", NY Times, 3/5/24)).

(See: "Screams Before Silence", Directed by Anat Stalinsky. Presented by Sheryl Sandberg).

In a nearly identical fashion, the surprise attack by Imperial Japan at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 in which 2300 people were murdered was the cause of the United States' entry into World War Two. When Imperial Japan refused for years to accept an unconditional surrender, the United States and its allies, in prosecuting the war killed between 500,000 -- 1 million Japanese civilians.

Israel since Hamas has refused an unconditional surrender is proceeding as the United States,  and its allies did in the Pacific after Pearl Harbor. All civilian deaths will end when Hamas unconditionally surrenders. Nearly 25,000 of the Arab fatal casualties in Gaza since October 7 are Hamas sociopaths and their Gazan willing executioners who are attempting to repeat October 7 over and over -- as their leaders publicly demand -- until there are no Jews left on earth. A goal completely consistent with the unrevoked Article 7 of the Hamas charter which demands the murder of every Jew on earth.

As former MSNBC journalist, Yardena Schwartz, recently wrote:

"In late October(2023), senior Hamas official Ghazi Hammad vowed to repeat the attacks of October 7 'again and again' until Israel is destroyed. 'The Al-Aqsa Flood is just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth,' he said on a Lebanese new program.'Does that mean the annihilation of Israel?' the news anchor asked. 'Yes, of course,' Hammad replied. See: " Ghosts of a Holy War. The 1929 Massacre in Palestine That Ignited the Israel-Palestine Conflict. Chapter 28. The Al-Aqsa Flood. " Yardena Schwartz. Page 355(2024).

The cause of October 7, 2023  is the equivalent of the cause of December 7, 1941. Israel's defensive response is the equivalent to the defensive response of the United States to Pearl Harbor.  Cause and effect. It is not complicated. Most people  -- although not Ms. Buttu and her ilk -  at least those who are still taught non woke world history including Pearl Harbor--understand that before effects there are causes. It is not complicated.  it is obvious that Mr. Buttu's entire polemic of calumnies is rooted in the antisemitic revisionism of Edward Said.

See: " 'My Beautiful Old House' and Other Fabrications of Edward Said", Justus Reid Weiner, Commentary Magazine, September 1999.

What is truly abhorrent if not terrifying about the antisemitic calumnies that Ms. Buttu  presents as fact was  made clear during World War Two by two German philosophers, Adorno and Horkheimer in their "Dialectic of Enlightenment":

" ...what is pathological about anti-semitism is not projective behavior as such, but the absence of reflection in it".  ("Anti-Judaism. The Western Tradition", Professor David Nirenberg. University of Chicago, 2013, page 299).

Richard Sherman, Florida