Joel Olstein’s June 12 letter states that I claimed Israel is committing genocide. He wrote it is “at best inaccurate and at worst a lie.”

With Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu stating his intent to flatten Gaza where Palestinians were living in the open-air prison, he is well on his goal to accomplishing it. Some 38,000 Palestinians have been killed, with some 70% being women and children and another 80,000 wounded. At some point in time more dead will be found in the flattened buildings.

It pains me to see children become orphaned, some with limbs missing and some starving to death.

The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was adopted on Dec. 9, 1948. It is an instrument of international law that codified the crime of genocide.

The current definition of genocide is set out in Article II of the Genocide Convention: “Genocide means … the following acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

If the roles were reversed, I would feel the same way.

It is high time for a ceasefire. Let there be peace on earth.

Larry Gilbert Sr., Lewiston