Those are indeed very good reasons to highlight the disparities.

I think upon reflection I was wrong to think that that line does imply that support. In any case, the reasons for covering that disparity are so important that even if it did, it would be imperative to find a way around that implication.
My bad (and apologies).

can you show me some places where the discrepancy in israeli vs. palestinian power and civilian causalties is used in order to explicitly appeal for more murders of israeli civilians? frankly, i think you’re either imagining it, or talking about fringe figures who could not possibly be confused with a palestine solidarity group on a US college campus by any person with a scintilla of rationality.

given that there are very good reasons to highlight the disparities (e.g. to alert people to the nature and scale of the crisis, to highlight the fact that it is a colonizer/colonist situation, to correct popular perceptions that the conflict primarily consists of palestinians murdering israeli civilians and israelis defending themselves), why infer that the purpose of the signs is to appeal for more murder and not one of the other purposes?

It makes me wonder to what degree political connotation ought be taken into account (especially when it is so easy to overlook, or as in this case, when it shouldn’t come into play)?

That being said, of course that quote is spot on. Just looking at the number of people killed is staggering. So many more Palestinians have been slaughtered.

The whole thing makes me quite sick.

Kyle Berkowitz’s comment on racism requiring an overt statement is more than a little naive. Did he imagine the SJP would receive an official letter?

like facts illustrating the enormous disparities in military strength between the Israeli army and the Palestinian people, and between the magnitude of the crimes committed by Israel against the Palestinians and those committed by the Palestinians against Israelis.

As a rule I am not fond of apologetics, whatever it is being employed to defend. While the situation of the Palestinians is far from just, that does not justify violence that is often targeted explicitly at the innocent and vulnerable.

Response to vandalism disappointing

http://tinyurl.com/5vhq7y

To the Editor:

As you may have noticed, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), an official Case Western Reserve University student group, placed around 100 signs on campus Sunday evening on KSL Oval, Mather Quad, and the Binary Walkway. These signs consisted of factual statistics, each of which was cited. Our sources included the Associated Press, BBC, the United Nations, the Geneva Convention, B’Tselem (an Israeli human rights group), and others. Permission was obtained to place them around KSL Oval for the entire week of Nov. 17 via the Online Facility Reservation Request form; the other two venues were not listed, so it was assumed permission was not required. These signs (and locations) were modeled after Domestic Violence Awareness Week, sponsored by Alpha Chi Omega.

It was later found out from the Office of Student Affairs that the Binary Walkway indeed does not have a policy for signs. A faculty member complained, and the office of the president decided to remove our signs from the Binary Walkway on the evening of Nov. 17, the supposed reason being our organization name was not listed.

When the administration was asked if we could replace the signs with our organization name listed, our request was denied – a disgusting and deliberate act of racism. On Monday, a student was spotted on Mather Quad smashing a sign with his book bag. On Wednesday, someone was spotted stuffing the Mather Quad signs into a trash can. Wednesday evening, CWRU police removed our signs from the KSL Oval – even though we had permission and our organization name was listed on each KSL sign. Read Uri Strauss’s letter on Zionism and the insecurity they possess regarding their political position. Strauss is a law student, one of our most active SJP members, and an Israeli.

As a student at Case Western Reserve University for over three years, I feel like Arab (more specifically, Palestinian) and Muslim students are neglected and receive no support from the administration. It has become the status quo in America, where words like Arab and Palestinian are synonymous with terrorists, suicide-bombers, and “jihadists.”

If these signs were critical of government other than Israel’s (even our own American government), nothing would have happened. If we were any other race, the administration would have rushed to our support. Instead, I had to seek them out to figure out what happened. We still do not know where our signs are. If the office of the president knows, please let us know. They cost money and lots of time. There are plenty of non-Arab/Muslim students and faculty on campus who support SJP and also feel dismissed by the administration.

For those wanting to learn more about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, go to the library and do your own research. If you want to join SJP, e-mail palestine@case.edu. Knowledge is power. The oppressor never prevails.

The goal of Palestine Awareness Week is to foster peace and understanding. After meeting with the administration to resolve this issue, we were disappointed by their contradictory actions.

Rami Mikati

President, Students for

Justice in Palestine

4. Jewish students respond to letters

http://tinyurl.com/66mmvx

To the Editor:

In the Nov. 21 edition of The Observer there were two letters to the editor that talked about the pro-Palestinian signs that were put up on the KSL Oval and other places in the university as part of Palestinian Awareness Week. The articles accused Jewish (Zionist) students of insensitivity, possibly vandalizing the signs, and feelings of insecurity when Israel and Zionism are questioned.

As Jewish students who are involved in a number of Jewish groups on campus we think we speak for many Jewish students at CWRU when we state the following:

1) We believe that the state of Israel is an expression of the Zionist belief that the Jewish people, as all peoples, have the right to self-determination in a country and to develop its society as a Jewish and democratic country.

2) The land of Israel is the historic homeland of the Jewish people as can be understood from the Bible and this was ratified by the United Nations on Nov. 29, 1947 when it split this land into two states: one for the Jews and one for the Arabs.

3) The state of Israel has a right to live in secure boundaries, and since its founding on May 15, 1948 has looked to make peace with its Arab neighbors. In fact, as a result of the Arab countries’ invasion of Israel in 1948 the Arabs living in what became Israel at that time lost the chance for a state as those lands were incorporated into Egypt and Jordan.

4) During these 60+ years there have been acts of aggression and self-defense by Israel, the Palestinians, and the other Arab countries. These events and the different narratives associated with them continue.

5) The majority of Jewish Israelis want the Arab Israeli minority in Israel to feel that they are equal citizens of the state of Israel. The majority of Israelis are also interested in a two-state solution allowing Israel to be a democratic Jewish state that can live in peace with a democratic Palestinian state.

6) The state of Israel lives in constant tension as both the Hamas organization in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon still state that they want to destroy Israel.

7) Students for Justice in Palestine, like all student groups, has the right to voice their perspectives within the rules of the university and according to freedom of speech that we all cherish.

We criticize and condemn anyone who destroys the property of others.

9) We believe that the university is a marketplace of ideas and that open and constructive discussion on the issues of the Middle East is important to the discourse and growth we desire as students at CWRU.

10) Hate speech, feeling intimidated, and the belittling of the ideas of others are not ways to develop a discussion or assure a stronger campus community.

We humbly suggest that as this semester ends and we move toward spring semester 2009, the discourse on this campus become more civil, all students be allowed to express their ideas in a positive way, and no one made to feel threatened by the words or actions of others.

Finally, one of the letters commented on the synonymy in the American mind of “Arab,” “Palestinian,” and “terrorist,” words that are not equivalent. We would like to assert a similar, often unacknowledged distinction between “Jew,” “Israeli,” and “Zionist.”

Emily Joseph, Jacob Kornblatt, Daniel Engel, Joshua Rubin, and Jocelyn Eckert

Undergraduate students

http://tinyurl.com/56rhvy

To the Editor:

Uri Strauss’ missive (Nov. 21) equating Zionism with colonialism is a house of cards teetering on a faulty – and disingenuous – premise. Colonialism refers to settlement authorized by and for the benefit of an outside mother country. Zionism has no external mother country; rather, the motherland is Israel itself. Thus, creation of the State of Israel was, in fact, one of the first post-colonial nationalist movements of the 20th century.

An examination of land records from the Ottoman and British Mandatory periods up to the United Nations partition vote in 1947 reveals that only a small fraction of the land was owned (purchased, registered, and taxable) by resident Palestinians; many of these Palestinians migrated from Syria to Palestine at the same time as the Jews’ return to their ancestral home. And during this period the Jews purchased, rather than squatted or conquered, the territory on which they lived.

Moreover, with all the disinformation in the press and on the Internet and airways, it needs to be repeated that the leaders of the nascent Jewish state agreed to partition, but local Palestinians and surrounding Arab governments tried to destroy the embryonic state and push the Jews into the sea. Even a cursory examination of the Palestinian Awareness Week signs posted near the library shows some wishful thinking – a map of Palestine encompassing not only Gaza and the West Bank, but all of present day Israel. Hmmm…some things never change.

Charles Rosenblatt

Professor of Physics

and Macromolecular Science

http://tinyurl.com/6e3w4s

To the Editor:

It is unfortunate that the Palestinian Awareness Week posters were sabotaged. This was obviously the wrong way to show disagreement; there are far more constructive ways to discuss these issues.

With that said, the majority of the “facts” put up on our campus are either gross distortions or utterly false. Israel currently holds 10,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails. Hamas and Hezbollah do not take prisoners except those they kidnap for ransom; two of three they did kidnap died in captivity.

In 2005 Israel removed itself entirely from Gaza, dismantling all army bases and settlements. In Palestine’s first elections under their own rule, Hamas, a recognized terrorist organization, was elected and proceeded to fire 7000 rockets at Israeli towns. Israel still sends $20 million annually to the government that is bombarding them.

Palestine has not been the target of any UN resolutions because it is not a country; the UN has repeatedly condemned Hamas and Hezbollah for their terrorist actions. The security fence, which was essentially completed in 2005, is only a wall in urban areas to stop sniper attacks. It is hard to compare casualties when one side has the main intention of protecting its civilians and the other uses them as human shields. It serves no one to argue about who has had more children killed, except to point out that everyone is losing.

I could go on, but these arguments are immaterial; the larger issue is the need for dialogue, both here and in the Middle East. It accomplishes nothing for groups to see one side of the issue, then huddle together and bask in its brilliant obviousness. Israel needs to see the urgent need for a Palestinian state, and that the impoverished and downtrodden are those who will turn to radical extremists like Hamas. At the same time, the Palestinian people need to take responsibility not to support the terrorists that are making their situation worse.

What we can do here is talk; find people with an opposing viewpoint and talk to them as rational open-minded people. There are those among us, on both sides of this issue, who seek to lower the level of discourse by degenerating into base accusations and generalizations. It is up to the rational and the calm to call them out and open a rational discourse on the issue. Discourse is the only path to peace, and peace is the only hope for a future.

Ethan Chaleff

http://tinyurl.com/5hreow

To the Editor:

While I do have conflicting political beliefs about the signs in question, I wrote to discuss the specific incident Rami Mikati and Uri Strauss discussed in their letters.

The thing that triggered me to write this letter was the disgusting way in which Strauss responded to the vandalism of the signs. As a disclaimer, I believe it was wrong to vandalize the signs. Freedom of speech is something we value in America. For some individual to be so disrespectful is unacceptable. Despite this, it is not okay to write off the “sabotage” of the pro-Palestinian signs as the work of hateful Zionists who are therefore “insecure about their own political position.” Because we do not know who vandalized the signs, this is more of a First Amendment issue as I have highlighted. It is the right of Students for Justice in Palestine to display their beliefs. It is my right to write about my beliefs in The Observer. It is not right for anyone to impede either of our opinions from being heard.

According to Mikati, the signs along the binary walkway were removed because SJP had not displayed their group’s name on the signs as the rules require. In that respect, it was completely justified that the signs were removed. I do not want to sound contradictory: it is the right of all student groups to display signs such as those set up by the SJP, but there are rules that should be followed. Mikati goes on to say that the SJP requested permission to repost the signs and was denied, calling it “a disgusting and deliberate act of racism.” I am insulted that someone would accuse the administration of the university of being racist. This accusation is thoughtless and rude. Unless the administration specifically cited the reason for denying the SJP’s request to replace the signs as “not Zionist,” it is unfair to blame the situation on racism. The administration was probably unwilling to grant the SJP permission to replace their signs because SJP had broken the rules previously.

I won’t humor the rest of Mikati’s claims with responses. Such claims can only be rewarded with shame that he insulted the administration of his own university. If the goal of SJP is to foster peace then their president should not propagate hate.

Kyle Berkowitz

Undergraduate Student