My position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict does not matter. I write not because I want to challenge your strongly held beliefs - which my writing would not change anyway - but because I am saddened by the propaganda war in the press.
There is so little truth presented in the national newspapers, in photographs, and on television that we are unable to form intelligent and informed opinions about the conflict. I am not disputing that events portrayed in the papers happened or that photographs are real, but we have been presented with such biased information that the only real thing we can learn is where a particular article writer stands. (In fact, we cannot even learn that; one woman I know refuses to read The New York Times because she feels the writers are too pro-Palestinian, another feels she is getting balanced reporting from the Times, and a third thinks that the Times is too pro-Israeli.) Into this information vacuum, have stepped writers of Viewpoints who, in the absence of facts, tell us propaganda that we are to believe.
This is a university; in theory, we are supposed to have access not only to information, but to discussion. So what now? If I don't know what is really going on in the Middle East and neither do you, how are we to talk? The best place to start is with a broad sample of information; all the sources I am about to list are biased in some way, but if you look at the all (and this is just a sample) you will be better able to form reasonable opinions about the conflict.
1. The Palestine Chronicle (www.palestinechronicle.com), an internet news magazine,
2. The Arabic Media Internet Network (www.amin.org), an internet news source about the Middle East,
3. The Jerusalem Post (www.jpost.com), an Israeli English daily,
4. Ha'aretz Daily Newspaper (www.haaretzdaily.com), the English version of an Israeli daily published in cooperation with the International Herald Tribune
5. The United Nations Question of Palestine News Centre (www.un.org/Depts/ dpa/qpalnew/newscentre.htm),
6. The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (www.camera.org), a good source of information, but do not let the name make you think this is an unbiased source,
7. And for good measure, The New York Times (www.nytimes.com) for a fairly typical American perspective on the conflict.
After you have looked at these websites, and plenty of others, you will have a fairly good idea of what is actually happening in Israel and the occupied territories; obviously you have the choice to believe one information source to the exclusion of the others. But after doing this exercise, if you are an open-minded person, you will realize that there are many partial truths about the conflict.
With this understanding, it becomes possible for us to talk to each other intelligently as well as passionately. Instead of accusing each other of being wrong or ignorant of the real situation in print, horror of horrors, we could talk face to face. I am not speaking of large forums or community discussions, because those kinds of situations allow us to get up, yell at each other, and then go back to thinking how we thought before without a new idea in our heads.
When I write "we," I am referring to the entire University community, not special interest groups of students who we tend to think of when we think of this conflict; this is an international educational institution, and while some may be more educated about this conflict then others, no one group's voice carries more weight or is more important. In addition, the United States has historically taken an active role in the Middle East and we ought to be educated, opinionated, and vocal about an issue and a place where our government has chosen to become involved.
Talk about these issues with your friends, with people you know casually who probably have different opinions then you do, with your clubs, and religious communities. Speak one on one with many people, but do not leave it to Jews, Muslims, Israelis, and Palestinians on this campus to be the only one's speaking. So fine, keep writing Viewpoints, but whatever your opinion, please make sure they are informed pieces of writing. Some may claim that, because you are not a member of one of the above groups or because your beliefs are not mainstream acceptable ones, you have no right to speak on this conflict. You do have a right. As Mouin Rabbani wrote in this column a few days ago, these are your tax dollars, and I might add, this is your world.
Alexis Gerber is a freshman who has not yet declared a major.
