To the Editor:
I read with great interest The Dartmouth's article "U.S. students protest Israeli attacks" (April 10, 2002), which reported on the protests that took place at various U.S. universities. Thankfully, it appears Dartmouth students have a little more sense. It is interesting that the Shamis group has a co-founder in Leyla Kamalick, who is descended from Christian Palestinians. We don't often hear about the Christian Palestinians, although there are many of them. As one of the Wall Street Journal editorials pointed out recently ("They Live to Die," April 8, 2002): "we have not yet seen Christian Palestinians, of whom there are many, suicidally attacking the Israelis. Their sense of oppression has so far been insufficient to convert Christian Palestinians' traditional understandings of right and wrong into a white-hot faith that can see suicide and slaughter as acts of homage to God." This does not mean that many Christian Palestinians do not embrace militant Palestinian nationalism, just that the tactic of suicide bombings targeted against innocent civilians does not "fit" into their moral framework.
What I really don't understand is Ms. Kamalick's assertion that "The Israeli offensive kills Palestinian civilians as much as the Palestinian terrorist attacks do." Does Ms. Kamalick have any proof that Israelis are indiscriminately firing on innocent Palestinians? Is this just conjecture? Yes, there are numbers comparisons quoted in the news of how many Palestinians were killed vs. how many Israelis. Normally, the numbers do not tell the complete story, that most of the Palestinian dead are definite combatants -- suicide bombers, Palestinians killed during assaults on Israeli forces, etc. The number of Israeli dead does indeed include a few soldiers killed in the course of action, but also includes scores of innocent victims whose only crime was to be born and to live in a free Israel.
The real distinction is that the Israeli offensive does not target innocent civilians as the terrorist attacks do. Indeed, the Israeli government has time and again chosen to put their troops in immense danger specifically in order to avoid civilian casualties. You can read about this in the April 10 Jerusalem Post ("Entire Jenin street was giant booby-trap"). Specifically, "the army decided against using jets to strike the camp because the area is mixed with a passive civilian population. The army opted instead to have soldiers conduct house-to-house searches, progressing slowly and cautiously." They did this knowing full well that the area was booby-trapped.
This cautious and dangerous approach is not even close to being morally equivalent to terrorist attacks targeted against innocent civilians.
Dartmouth students, I urge you to stay completely informed of the situation if you are interested in a truly enlightened discourse. As a start, I would recommend that you go straight to the source and use the Internet to read the Israeli papers, which are rich in coverage and discussion of the current events prior to being filtered by the U.S. media. Don't join the protests against the Israeli government simply because it is the trendy cause of the moment. I hope you have more sense than that.
