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Dear Editor,
Your recent coverage of the Free Palestine rally on campus in January was skewed highly toward the ultra-right wing Israeli zionists here on campus. As well, the recent CHP ad quoting Obama’s support of Israel’s twisted and perverted policies just goes to show how morally and spiritually depraved and bankrupt the ultra-right wing Jewish racist zionists are on this campus.
Both the USA and Israel are failed international states — their collapses are BOTH imminent.
I stand with the President of Iran in denouncing Israel as “a stinking corpse,” and call for its leaders (and the leaders of International Jewish Zionists in both the USA and the UK) to be immediately arrested, prosecuted and executed by the International Criminal Court for the vicious WAR CRIMES they have ALL recently committed against the Palestinian people of Gaza.
Steve Jones
UCSC Alumnus
Santa Cruz, California
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Dear Editor,
Thank you for your coverage of the Jan. 21 Gaza demonstration. One of the “counter-demonstrators” carried a sign that read: “Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children as much as they hate us.”
This is a racist statement. If “Israelis” were substituted for “Arabs” you’d be called an “anti-Semite.” As for the Palestinians, maybe they “hate” the Israeli military for killing 350 Palestinian children in its most recent act of ethnic cleansing.
Regarding the present situation in Palestine/Israel, we need go back only to 1948 (not “2,000 years”), when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were driven from THEIR ancestral homes after acts of terror by the Irgun. The majority of the Palestinian descendents of those victims of ethnic cleansing now subsist in refugee camps, where they continue to be killed and maimed by the Israeli military’s U.S.-supplied WMDs.
The main obstacle to peace is the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. Noted Israeli scholar and Oxford University professor Avi Schlaim recently said “that throughout its 60 years, Israel has been remarkably reluctant to engage in meaningful negotiations with its Arab opponents to resolve the dispute between them and only too ready to resort to military force. … And the current vicious Israeli assault on the people of Gaza is the climax of this longstanding Israeli policy of shunning diplomacy and relying on brute military force” (Democracy Now!, 1/14/09).
Peace will come when Israel ends the occupation and its military respects Palestinian children as much as its own.
Sincerely,
G. deSilvas, Santa Cruz
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Dear Editor,
In response to those who wrote letters to the editor (1/29/09) voicing complaints about CHP’s article, “Gaza Conflict Demonstrates Campus Division,” I have one simple question: where is the power? Israel, with all of its military might and the backing of the biggest bully on the block, the United States, literally holds the people of Gaza captive. Although I do not purport to defend Hamas’ strategic modus operandi, the firing of rockets and mortars into Israeli territory has been met with extreme and utterly disproportionate force. Moreover, Israel’s response has shamefully targeted civilian populations that have no control over the actions of Hamas. As an imprisoned people, Gazans have nowhere to seek refuge. There is a cruel irony to leaflets that the IDF drops on civilian neighborhoods “warning” inhabitants that their homes will soon be subject to attack. This is nothing short of apartheid and fascism by the Israeli government. Meanwhile, the mainstream press in the U.S. does little but give the Israeli government a pass on behavior that amounts to war crimes. Therefore, I applaud any attempt by CHP to overcome this power imbalance in its coverage of how this terrible conflict plays out on the UCSC campus. If readers want to see more knee-jerk placation of the Israeli government’s behavior, there are plenty of outlets to choose from. Try the New York Times … or perhaps Fox News. But don’t for one minute pretend that this is an even-handed debate.
Robert P. Doyle, J.D.
Predoctoral Graduate Student
