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PAW received numerous letters about the Snapshot photograph in the December 6 issue. We published several of them in our January 24 print issue. The rest are printed below. We are all troubled by the violence and loss of life in the Middle East, but your attempt to deal with it in a very superficial and biased manner is unfortunate. There are two sides to the current conflict, and you choose to ignore one side by implying that Israel bears the sole responsibility for the violence. Your photograph included paper cutouts of children suggesting that they are the intended victims. As you must be aware, the Palestinians have been criticized by a number of human rights organizations for encouraging children to protest in areas where their lives are in danger due to gunfights between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militia. Your quote that the vigil is not a political statement is disingenuous since the only visible writing in the picture blames Israel for the violence. In an effort to provide unbiased reporting, I expect that next week you will have a picture of those who mourn the victims of Palestinian violence. I expect to see another paper cutout of children, but with their legs cut off to commemorate the children who lost their legs when Palestinians bombed a school bus full of Israeli children. Joseph Wiesel '77 The Princeton students and staff pictured in the December 6 Snapshot condemn "Israeli aggression" in their daily silent vigil. To do so today is fashionable and smacks of political correctness - vilifying the Israeli Goliath for taking on the Palestinian boy with a slingshot. The facts of the recent Palestinian uprising, however, tell a different story. When Yasir Arafat met Ehud Barak and Bill Clinton last summer at Camp David, he was offered the largest package of concessions any Israeli prime minister has ever been prepared to give, which included Israeli recognition of a Palestinian state, return of most of the West Bank and Gaza (portions not already handed over under the terms of the Oslo accords), and Palestinian sovereignty in East Jerusalem. Arafat rejected this proposal, however, and chose a violent uprising instead, with the goals of recovering his standing among his own people and in the Arab world, internationalizing the conflict to reduce the role of the United States and eliminate the need for bilateral negotiation, and wearing Israeli society down in a protracted war of attrition. Since late September, Israel has been confronted on a daily basis with Palestinian youths throwing stones and Molotov cocktails, Palestinian security forces shooting at soldiers and into Israeli homes (with guns issued them by Israel under the Oslo terms), and terror on the roads in the form of drive-by shootings, roadside explosives and car bombs. On the day I received the last issue of PAW, three Israelis - including a mother of six - were killed by Palestinian gunmen shooting at Israeli vehicles. Dozens more Israelis have been killed in the violence, and scores maimed, including three sibling schoolchildren who had limbs blown off when their schoolbus was bombed. Measures taken by Israel to protect its citizens against these attacks are condemned as "aggression." Similar Orwellian terminology has been employed to term this latest Palestinian uprising "peaceful." The fact remains, however, that the Palestinian side has been the aggressor in the latest round of this conflict. Moreover, were the Palestinians to cease the violence, they would be met with an Israeli leadership and society eager to resume peace negotiations. As for the Princeton protesters, the victims they mourn are victims of the Palestinian leadership's preference for violent confrontation over negotiated settlement, even at the cost of creating hundreds of Palestinian martyrs - including children - for the cause. And it is hard to accept Ashe Husein's comment that the protest "is not a political statement," when the sign he holds portrays a Palestinian flag dripping blood, with the word "enough" on the bottom. I would submit to this group that the time they spend in their vigil in memory of one side's victims would be better utilized trying to convince the Palestinian leadership to stop creating more victims, renounce violence and terror, and resume negotiations. Mitch Schwaber '86 It is exasperating to see this year's BIG LIE editorialized full page, full color in PAW under the guise of the photo-essay Snapshot. The central image of Snapshot decries "...the Victims of Israeli Aggression." Since the dawn of the Zionist movement, Arabs have opposed any and all Jewish national presence in the Middle East. This is unsurprising. There are even some Jews who, despite history and scripture, deny that their people have a moral claim to the Land of Israel. Nonetheless, most rational people realize that the fight in the West Bank is a dispute over rival claims to a single territory where both sides have some valid claims. It is transparently obvious that virtually all of the shootings, firebombings and rock-throwing incidents that have been raging on the West Bank in recent weeks, the "aggression," was initiated by Yasir Arafat's Palestinian Authority and is being carried on with enthusiasm by the Palestinian people. Particularly horrendous is the renewal by the Palestinians of the practice, common in this part of the world before the appearance of the laws of Moses, of the sacrifice of children with the complicity of their parents. If the Palestinian's want the killing to stop they need simply stop shooting. How dare PAW implicitly accept the Palestinian position that their violence, their "aggression," is justified while the response of the Israelis, measured as it is, but even if it were excessive, is not ? The subject of where justice lies in this dispute can, and perhaps should be debated in the pages of PAW, as it can and should be debated in peace negotiations. PAW's printing the word "aggression" where "self defense" or "retaliation" While the Middle East conflict remains complicated, the PAW's editorial opinion is clear. Your "Middle East Message," (December 6, 2000), printed in the colors of the Palestinian National Authority, propagates a controversial viewpoint by reiterating a claim that the Firestone Plaza demonstration "is not a political statement," and printing a half-page photograph of a sign memorializing "victims of Israeli aggression." A silent vigil for peace may be laudable, but assessing blame is a political act, particularly when using inflammatory rhetoric to memorialize the casualties of only one side. PAW's literally colored reporting does not leave space to mention or memorialize the deaths of hundreds of Israeli innocents murdered by Palestinian terrorists during the "peace process," or to question whether voluntary participants in armed -riots against Israeli border defenses are truly victims of Israeli "aggression." The demonstrators and the PAW play politics when they brand as Israeli "aggressions" the unprecedented and unilateral territorial and political concessions of the Barak government, and when they overlook the responsibility of Palestinian leaders who publicly and proudly aggravated the violence that has produced these Palestinian and Israeli victims. By disregarding the results of unrestrained mob violence, including terrorism against Israeli civilians, lynchings, and the desecration of Jewish holy places such as Joseph's Tomb, the PAW advances not merely a political agenda, but one that is highly radical and partisan. Marshall
Devor '70 While the Middle East conflict remains complicated, the PAW's editorial opinion is clear. Your "Middle East Message," printed in the colors of the Palestinian National Authority, propagates a controversial viewpoint by reiterating a claim that the Firestone Plaza demonstration "is not a political statement," and printing a half-page photograph of a sign memorializing "victims of Israeli aggression." A silent vigil for peace may be laudable, but assessing blame is a political act, particularly when using inflammatory rhetoric to memorialize the casualties of only one side. PAW's literally colored reporting does not leave space to mention or memorialize the deaths of hundreds of Israeli innocents murdered by Palestinian terrorists during the "peace process," or to question whether voluntary participants in armed riots against Israeli border defenses are truly victims of Israeli "aggression." The demonstrators and PAW play politics when they brand as Israeli "aggressions" the unprecedented and unilateral territorial and political concessions of the Barak government, and when they overlook the responsibility of Palestinian leaders who publicly and proudly aggravated the violence that has produced these Palestinian and Israeli victims. By disregarding the results of unrestrained mob violence, including terrorism against Israeli civilians, lynchings, and the desecration of Jewish holy places such as Joseph's Tomb, PAW advances not merely a political agenda, but one that is highly radical and partisan. Adam J. Flisser '93 In regard to the Snapshot picture on the last page of the December 6, 2000, issue of your magazine, the quote printed that "This is not a political statement..." would have been much more credible if the deaths of the Palestinians for whom the "vigil" was being held, rather than be attributed to Israeli aggression, was attributed to the unadulterated and unmitigated dissemination of hate by terrorist groups having their own political agenda. Vigil should also be paid to the innocent Israeli civilians not throwing rocks or Molotov cocktails, but killed by Palestinian terrorists while in a vehicle bearing Israeli license plates of shopping in a crowded marketplace. Howard Gooen The Snapshot entitled "Middle East Message" includes the following quotation regarding a daily Firestone Plaza vigil for Palestinian casualties of recent Mideast tensions: "This is not a political statement." PAW's sympathetic report contrasts starkly with its coverage of a pro-Israel rally, which received one-twentieth the copy space on page 12 and an accompanying text with negative innuendo. No one can condone the violence and senseless loss of life accompanying Middle East strife. But does PAW not consider that innocent people have also died of recent terrorist bombings? The vigil participants may view themselves and their poster "in memory of the victims of Israeli aggression," as apolitical. But PAW's "Middle East Message" is inarguably political, biased, and offensive. Jan Charles Horrow
'73 s'76 p'04 Jane Sherwin Shapiro
'76 s'75 p'03 p'04 The PAW of December 6 shows Palestinian sympathizers holding a vigil "in memory of victims of Israeli aggression". We must join them in sorrow for the Arab and Israeli dead, and in hope that the violence ends very soon. The fact is that violence will stop only when the Palestinian leader, Arafat, stops it. Otherwise, he will postpone for some years the opportunity to gain an independent and viable Palestinian state and will bring economic and social ruin on his people. On the surface there is a mirror image - both sides see the other as the aggressor. Not so. The French have a saying, "This animal is very wicked. When it is attacked, it defends itself." That is Israel today. Since October, Israelis are attacked day and night with automatic weapons, firebombs, car bombs, and remotely operated roadside explosives. School bus shooting and bombing killed parents and left children without limbs, teachers driving to school and other drivers are gunned down from passing vehicles, and firing is directed daily at homes in a Jerusalem neighborhood that faces an Arab town. Many gunmen are members of the Palestinian Authority police, who were afforded Kalachnikov automatic weapons by Israel following the Oslo agreements of 1993. Others are in the military arm of Arafat's political party and fundamentalist terrorists now let out from Palestinian jails. When the riots began, small Israeli army positions were attacked by large mobs with rocks and firebombs, then by shooting from within the crowds. Soldiers are not suited to handling this. Even rubber bullets and tear gas can be fatal, and sadly, casualties occurred. Mob action soon gave way to shooting at civilians and soldiers. Israeli troops at first replied to observed sources of fire, and later changed their tactics to search out the actors and their masters. Israeli troops do not enter the Palestine Authority, in which 90 percent of the West Bank and Gaza Arabs live, and you might well ask, why do they not just go away? The troops are near the borders to protect isolated Israeli settlements located in Arab populated areas. Many, perhaps most, such settlements would be withdrawn in a comprehensive agreement. Indeed, most Israelis would vote to approve a viable independent Palestinian state, under security arrangements and borders reached though negotiation, not by violence. Such a state would have contiguous areas in both the Gaza Strip and on the west Bank, with a capital in East Jerusalem. Sufficient economic integration would give the Palestinian economy a chance to grow. Time is short. A new American administration will be busy learning, and Arab violence can lead to an Israeli government that would put near-term security before peace. The present Israeli government has been able to resist strong citizen pressure to use more force, and continues to seek a negotiated solution. Chairman Arafat, let's get going! Daniel Shimshoni '41 You may respond to these
letters by sending an email to: "Snapshot" <paw@princeton.edu>
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