Letters to the editor

Balanced analysis needed for conflict

Jason Okrent's column "Learning From Israel" painted a muddled and incomplete picture of the current situation in Israel. Nowhere in his piece did Okrent address the other side of the war Israel has lethally fought for half a century.

The conveniently unnamed enemies are the Palestinians who struggle to defend land they have inhabited for millennia and which recent Jewish, primarily European immigrants, have illegally occupied since Okrent's heroic "War of Independence" in 1948.

This raises the question of who exactly were these immigrants wresting independence away from?

The answer is the Palestinians who live under strict occupation imposed by Israeli forces, and the millions of refugees scattered across the globe who make up the largest refugee population on earth.

While Israelis mourn the loss of the men and women in their military (which is compulsory for them upon turning 18 with few exceptions), Palestinian refugees live in unbearable conditions as a direct result of the illegal occupation Israel's heroes impose, many able to see their occupied villages and land through barbed wire.

Okrent is quick to mourn the loss of Israeli military men and women, but not the 3,600 some Palestinians killed by them since September 2000; nor does he mention the generous weaponry America supplies Israel with to conduct its heroic defense.

An even-handed approach to this subject must be presented, particularly to busy college students who don't always have time to read up on the complex and twisted history of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

-- Hanady Kader

Junior, political science, Near Eastern languages and civilization

Region has deeper seeds

Jason Okrent, "Learning from Israel," July 6, seems to take things out of context.

Okrent refers to a "war of independence." The Israelis were never under occupation. The soldiers who are remembered for their sacrifices are the same ones who exiled and massacred millions of Palestinians. They wiped out entire cities and villages, killing women, children and elderly people. The fact that the "ground [he] was treading casually for [his] morning exercise" was the land of millions of Palestinian refugees seems to have escaped him. Thus, the use of the verb "defending" would best be replaced by "occupying."

Furthermore, Okrent says "the cost of war stares you directly in the face" when in Israel. Was Okrent facing the Palestinian territories when "the cost of war" was staring at him? Palestinian cities are constantly under siege and are destroyed repeatedly by Israeli tanks -- not to mention continuous civilian arrests and killings.

One can still get a different angle on the daily actions of the soldiers. Recently, I went to a talk given by a former Israeli soldier who discussed why he and a group of other former Israeli soldiers refused to serve in the army. He said the operations carried out daily by the Israeli army conflicted with what can be considered humane.

Okrent might have been impressed by the sincerity with which Israelis mourn their soldiers, however, that is no excuse for depicting a conflict that has existed for more that half a century as one army's heroism.

-- Wafa Hassouneh

Junior, Bioengineering