Editor’s Note: Letters to the editor are not fact-checked by The Providence Eye, as they represent an opportunity for readers to write in response to our reporting. The following statements do not represent The Providence Eye, and any assertion of fact has not been verified by the organization.
The follow letters are in response to Providence Will Be the First City in U.S. History to Vote on Divesting from Genocide, published on July 31, 2026:
I am glad that Providence is proudly anti-war. I wonder if the city has any investments in Raytheon, our own local war machine? Trump’s chosen war, aimed at controlling the world’s oil supplies started with an illegal attack on a girls school killing about 150 children. Trump continues to threaten illegal acts against Iran under false pretenses. The U.S. Navy has fired over 1,000 Raytheon-built Tomahawks for initial strikes against Iranian targets. I wonder why we don’t start at home with our own monsters? In addition to choosing war, this government has decided upon murdering our own citizens through ICE without any consequences for the masked murderers. Isn’t targeting immigrants of color an heinous act? Shouldn’t we be divesting from the US government?
Lee Kossin
Wayland Square

Yikes, a PVD referendum on divesting from Israel? Seems to me there is no chance it can actually help anyone in the Middle East, but it definitely will be divisive here, just when the Democratic coalition needs to stick together to counter MAGA extremism. I think Israel has committed war crimes, but so has Hamas and its jihadi allies, and “genocide” is a reach since the West Bank/Gaza population has grown from about 1 million in 1967 when Israel took control to about 5.5 million now. Some will understandably see this referendum as support for the elimination of a Jewish presence in the Middle East which has already been accomplished in all the nearby Arab countries and in Palestine itself in all areas under Arab control. I think for those who care the Middle East efforts are better spent on a vision for peace that can start a process of reconciliation and compromise by all which is the only way to actually improve lives there. This referendum will only get people more angry at each other for no benefit
Barry Schiller
North Providence

1) JVP, or jewish voices for peace is neither jewish, nor for peace
2) Genocide is defined under international law as acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. This definition is established in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG), adopted by the United Nations in 1948. The acts that constitute genocide include: Killing members of the group, Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, Deliberately inflicting living conditions calculated to bring about its physical destruction, Imposing measures to prevent births within the group (way more babies in gaza now). This broad definition emphasizes that genocide can occur encompassing a range of actions aimed at the destruction of a protected group.
Hammas committed a genocide as stated in their charter and intent to obliterate jews and Israeli’s.  The population in Gaza has increased.  The worldwide Jewish population is still not what it was before 1939 and the Nazi genocide. Israel has provided polio vaccines for gazans. The facts show the Israeli’s provided over 3,000  calories per day per gazan and even the UN now acknowledges that hamas stole most of the aid because dead gazans gave them a propaganda boost. No facts coming out of gaza were verified because hamas used only their made-up numbers, and no one was willing to go there to verify. Even the hamas ministry of health now admits there were at most 70,000 people who died and about 40,000 were combatants, and anyone who died of other causes, like old age, were counted as civilian deaths from war.  The NY times ran a fr