Dear Editor,
The letter condemning Sharon Koifman’s letter of two weeks ago has amazingly missed the point. One has every right to be dissatisfied with a student union that has misused its status as Accredited Student Union for the past two years, and especially recently in repeatedly addressing only one human rights issue that students on campus have already been ALL made aware of, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, while remaining ignorant of other more severe breaches in human rights by governments such as Lybia, Sudan, Indonesia and Zimbabwe. Even if one manages to think that Israel has committed wrongs on par to these other governments it would still not justify the CSU’s narrow minded, exclusive focus on it. But it must be asserted that Israel’s crimes are not of the extreme nature of these other countries as these governments enact UNPROVOCKED gross abuses of human rights on peoples for no valid reason. Even if Israel acts disproportionately in one case, it still does not erase the valid reason of protecting its civilians. For one to equate Israel’s actions to any of those countries one would first have to forget about suicide bombers, of terrorist organizations that have vowed the destruction of any Jewish homeland in the Middle East and first and fore mostly the war that was waged on a newly born state of Israel from all directions by surrounding Arab peoples. The refugee situation is a direct consequence of these events. Just as Israel’s actions in Jenin may not have been proportionate to what was necessary to protect the Israeli population, one does not know if the relocation of Palestinians and the destruction of towns was a proportionate response to the wars being waged on the newly born state of Israel in 1947. But one may understand that these vulnerable Jewish communities could not allow themselves to be massacred by foreign Arabs as well as those in their own territory. After being born on May 14 1947, five Arab armies immediately invaded Israel, their intentions declared by Azzam Pasha, Secretary-General of the Arab League: “This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades.” So it should be clear that the Middle East issue is one that is not black and white as many Pro-Palestinian advocates insinuate, and is consequently extremely divisive on campus. Contrarily the student body could be unified on other human rights issues that are of a more heinous nature that remain unexposed. I plead with the student union executives to for once unify the student body and represent them, rather than raising tension on campus, pitting one group of students against another.
Matthew Crestohl
Major Philosophy
Major Liberal Arts College
