Re: "Candlelight vigils do not stop rockets" (Editorial, Aug. 3)

I found this "editorial" to be misguided and insulting.

You refer to my comment in your article that the insanity must stop without providing any context. You respond to my desire for an end to the violence by suggesting this to be a simplistic solution. I was speaking out of a sense of sorrow and frustration to express my outrage at the brutal carnage against innocent civilians and the reality that none of Israel's political objectives can be accomplished through this kind of aggression – a point underlying the vigil we organized.

Perhaps an even more simple approach will make my point more, perhaps a little simple algebra (we Arabs are partial to algebra, since inventing it several hundred years ago): Does 8 + 2 = 44+100? This is the distorted arithmetic of Israel's actions. On July 13, during dawn air raids and naval shelling, Israel killed some 44 Lebanese civilians, including over 15 children, and wounded more than 100 others. That's 144 Lebanese civilians killed or wounded before Hezbollah had even fired a single rocket into Israel. "Self-defense" does not entitle Israel to respond to the deaths of 8 soldiers and the kidnapping of 2 by killing 44 Lebanese civilians and injuring of over 100 more.

This is the cruel arithmetic by the fourth largest military in the world assaulting a largely defenseless Lebanese civilian population; it is not a calculation of "self-defense."

Israel may have the right to defend itself, but as a supposedly civilized democracy, Israel also has an obligation to adhere to the principles of international law and basic human decency. A Human Rights Watch report issued recently demonstrates, upon detailed examination, that Israel has respected neither the laws of war nor allowed for basic humanitarian assistance in Lebanon.

While our president and Congress -- echoing opinions like those expressed by the Herald editors -- endlessly repeat tropes about Israel's right to defend itself, neither has shown any compassion toward the Lebanese civilian population.

Apparently, the rights to life and human dignity of Lebanese civilians are not of equal concern as Israel's right to self-defense. I reject that calculation as an American and prefer the simple logic of saving lives and diplomacy to your convoluted arithmetic of death.

However, thank the editors for pointing out that it isn't quite that simple. It's difficult to see Lebanon lose more than 1,000 of its citizens, another 3,500 injured, and another million left as homeless refugees.

Let's be clear, the situation in the Middle East is tragically complex. But some aspects of it -- as the destruction of Qana so clearly demonstrates -- are simple. In this case, simply wrong. There is no justification for targeting civilians, and repeated Israeli strikes in populated civilian centers demonstrate that is exactly what they are doing.

Samer Khalaf, Esq., Paramus

The writer is the political outreach chairman of the American-Arab Ant-Discrimination Committee