Readers’ comments: September 5, 2025

Kudos to city for preemptive wildfire deterrence
Dear editor:
The letter below was sent to the City of Claremont last April. It is gratifying to see that the City Council is starting to take seriously the fire threat of non-native pine trees to the community [“City aims to remove pine trees in Claraboya, seeks input,” August 29]. Now it’s time to also protect Padua Hills:
“Although the Claremont Spring City Newsletter writes extensively about wildfire preparedness, we believe the City is not doing all it can. It is almost as if the Pacific Palisades and Altadena fires never happened. At least, from where we live, in Padua Hills, Claremont is just at the beginning of preparing for safety in the suburban/wilderness interface.
“In June 2019, we had an unsatisfactory experience with the Tree Committee, a sub-committee of the Community and Human Services Commission. A request for the removal of three Canary Island pine trees threatening our home just west of the property line was denied. Instead, the Commission recommended that the trees be pruned up from the ground on the mistaken notion that forest fires only spread by creeping along the ground. What we experienced in 2003 was a fire hurricane.
“Aside from knocking down brush in the canyon west of Padua Hills, the city should clear all vegetation to the Thompson Creek and remove nonnative trees, especially the pine trees that explode during fires. In Claraboya, as we saw in 2003, there is a real threat to the community from the pine trees lining Mountain Avenue. Why would we ignore the lessons learned from the tragedy of last January and not take vigorous pro-active measures to prevent it from happening in our own back yard?”
James Manifold
Claremont

If it quacks like a duck …
Dear editor: 
If he talks like a dictator, acts like a dictator, and pals around with dictators, he is a dictator.
Opanyi Nasiali 
Claremont

Trump’s immigration crackdown is simply law enforcement
Dear editor:
I just read our Courier editor’s essay from August 22, “Dems find their voice, unfortunately it’s in the gutter,” in which Mr. Rhodes treated us to such phrases as, “those masked, unidentified thugs …,” “Trump’s secret police …,” and “racists in his administration …” There were more, but you get the idea.
It could be argued that our nation is more polarized today than at any time since 1860. And Mr. Rhodes’ breathless, over-the-top, hyperbolic language certainly contributes to that atmosphere.
Most of Mr. Rhodes’ commentary seemed directed at recent efforts to enforce our nation’s immigration laws. In order to help explain the astonishment of Democrats and others on the political left, in recent years (decades?) some people have grown accustomed to laws generally not being enforced, whether under George Gascon in LA county, Chesa Boudin in San Francisco, or Alejandro Mayorkas in D.C. So these recent activities finally to enforce our immigration laws may come as a rude awakening to those who had already acclimated themselves to a general state of lawlessness. I do hope they will recover their senses.
As for the also mentioned Gavin Newsom, I feel I demean myself even to comment on that incompetent buffoon. By the way, what has he done to save our oil refineries? Or to increase in-state oil production? Or to reduce our state legislature’s very deliberate persecution of these companies? Or to help those people who were devastated by the loss of their homes in the Altadena and Pacific Palisades fires?
Regarding those horrible fires, Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass spent a lot of time yammering about permits and rebuilding back in January and February, but have done virtually nothing that actually helps anyone rebuild. And based on this atrocious record of non-performance Newsom thinks he should be president? Please.
Douglas Lyon
Claremont

Liberals’ argument against ‘supposed genocide’ is illogical
Dear editor:
Regarding the Courier’s August 29 Viewpoint, “Israel is morally responsible for feeding its ‘enemy population’”:
Wow, liberals are advancing another incredibly illogical and emotion laden argument, but to what end?
Trying to get people to give up their civil rights by dancing on the fresh graves of shooting victims and then blaming the firearm was bad enough, but now they believe they can sucker enough people into believing that Israel created a supposed genocide through famine while fighting a true genocide against them, brought by a religious sect that admits to that very intention!
To what end? Perhaps the same as when Germans blamed Jews.
Leslie Watkins
Claremont

‘Everyone knows Hamas is the evil villain in this story’
Dear editor:
If I am having a barbecue and my neighbor comes and slaps me on my cheek, I can choose to turn my face and allow him to slap me on the other cheek, or not.
But, if I am having a barbecue and my neighbor comes over with his buddies carrying rifles, machine guns, and grenades shouting, “Death from the river to the sea,” I have no choice. And, if my neighbor or his buddies retreat, taking with them members of my family or my friends as hostages, again I have no choice. I must do everything possible to regain my family and friends’ freedom.
Vengeance is mine, said my lord. But as far as I am concerned, the lord can dish out his vengeance in heaven while I dish out my vengeance on earth.
Hamas conducted a sneak attack on innocent unarmed Israeli citizens, not an armed military outpost. History has shown us that when Israel gets provoked, there are consequences, severe consequences, especially when Israeli men, women, children, and babies are killed or taken hostage.
Israel might be using over-the-top, excessive force, and I am sorry for the death of any Palestinian, but Israel has to rid the country and the region of this monster.
Just imagine for a moment that it is 1930 or 1940 and Hamas is in control and the Palestinian people are the Jews. Instead of the few thousand deaths that we have today there would be hundreds of thousands dead.
Everyone knows Hamas is the evil villain in this story. Israelis and the Palestinian people are the victims of Hamas action. Hamas knows the Palestinian people are suffering as a result of their action but they don’t care. Hamas has no scruples. Hamas has no morals.
David Stedman
Claremont

Hamas is committing genocide, Israel is the victim
Dear editor:
I am writing to commend David Stedman for his last two letters to the editor [“‘Violent Arab groups’ deserve blame for horrors in Gaza,” August 22, “Palestinians are reaping what they have sown,” August 15]. Thank you for standing up for Israel and for the Jewish people, and really identifying who is to blame for whatever “starvation” or grievances the Gazans have.
Jack Forney’s August 1 letter to the editor [“America could end Israel’s genocide in Palestine”] epitomizes how using statistics from Gazan Ministry of Health, controlled and run by Hamas offers to the media, formulates one’s perspective. Do we know 80,000 Gazans were killed because of the war? How many are Hamas? How many died of natural causes, or by the hands of Hamas? People seem to soak these numbers up like sunshine. Let’s stop getting burned by Hamas and start wearing our communal protective suntan lotion.
By ignoring abundant evidence of Israel’s unprecedented humanitarian aid during wartime, including many, many aimed to keep civilians safe, Forney and others replace fact with fiction. The fact that he is accusing Jews who have been victims of genocide throughout history of committing genocide is what his Jewish friend should be aghast at. The fact that Hamas started this war by infiltrating Israel and displaying absolute disregard for Jewish life, knowing full well and not caring that Israel would retaliate and Gazan civilians will be killed, is just evidence as to who is really committing genocide.
Want the war to stop? Pressure Hamas to put down their weapons and return all the hostages, without killing yet another one. But why should they do this when there are still around two million Gazans that they can hide behind and blitz social media with images of starving children.
Let’s put the blame where blame is deserved, right in the hands and tunnels of Hamas.
Carol Oberg
Ventura