Conditions in Gaza are an outrage to humanity

Re: “Health care workers hold ‘pop up clinic’ at Stanford to protest war” (, Jan. 7).

Thank you for covering the Jan. 6 protest of the genocide in Gaza led by Stanford health care workers. After over a year of watching the horror of Israel’s inhumane destruction of Gazan lives and culture, anyone with a conscience will recognize the sickness and exhaustion the protesters quoted in the article describe.

It is inspiring that even after this soul-crushing year, these health care workers refuse to give up and allow the bombing of schools and hospitals and the abduction and murder of health care workers to become our new normal.

I note that the Kamal Adwan Pop-up Clinic at Stanford is named for the Kamal Adwan Hospital, which prior to its destruction by Israeli forces last month, was the last functioning hospital in north Gaza. The population of North Gaza now faces starvation, ongoing bombardment, and intense cold with no access to health care.

— Alice Robinson Redwood City

Pop-up protest shows community’s anguish

Re: “Health care workers hold ‘pop up clinic’ at Stanford to protest war” (Jan. 7).

Thanks to the Mercury News and reporter Caelyn Pender for your detailed, thorough article on the pop-up “Sick from Genocide” clinic at Stanford. Thanks also to the health care workers who shared their anguish, fear and anger over the 15 months of mass death that Israel and the United States have unleashed against the people of Gaza.

So many of us share the health care workers’ agony. We see hospitals, schools and apartment buildings bombed; doctors, nurses, journalists and aid workers killed; children shot and starved while freezing in the winter rain. Our tax money and, for Jews like myself, our very identity is being weaponized to carry out this slaughter. Special thanks to the Mercury News and Pender for not quoting Israel defenders calling “Sick from Genocide” antisemitic. After 15 months of mass murder, protesting is not anti-Jewish.

It is our only medicine against despair.

— David Spero, San Francisco

Early capitulations will embolden Trump

Re: “McDonald’s to end diversity goals” (Page C7, Jan. 7).

Today we saw three examples of “anticipatory obedience.”

In Timothy Snyder’s excellent “On Tyranny,” the first of his 20 terse admonitions is “Do not obey in advance. Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.”

Last week, without being asked, Mark Zuckerberg announced the removal of fact-checking from Facebook; the vice chairman of the Fed, Michael Barr, said he would step down in advance of Trump’s arrival; and McDonald’s has meekly withdrawn from its attempts to bring diversity to its ranks.

Trump 2.0 arrives with a team emboldened by experience and prepared with an agenda. Defeatism or capitulation by the rest of us is the last thing that is needed at this point.

— James Bangsund, San Jose