Letters to the editor

Preventing understanding

To the Editor:

It was with a powerful disquiet that we contemplated the exhibition erected on College Green this week by the Free Palestine Action Network. FPAN constructed a mock Israeli checkpoint, as well as what was apparently a rather deconstructionist interpretation of a Palestinian refugee camp. The text accompanying the exhibit repeatedly referred to Israel's policies of "ghettoization" and "apartheid."

What FPAN apparently hopes to accomplish with its decontextualized pictures and provocative statements is to demonize Israel, to make it appear to be a country that, just for fun, pushes innocent people around. It is an emotional appeal, and an admittedly powerful one.

Such propagandistic and uninformative tactics worry me. This inflammatory and tendentious rhetoric does a disservice to those who would attempt to have a serious dialogue on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and FPAN insults the intelligence of Penn students by attempting to portray its ill-informed presentation as such.

The problem with responding to ridiculous arguments -- i.e. "a vote for a Catholic is a vote for the Pope"; "the Jews run the world"; "all Arabs are terrorists" -- is that in responding, one gives a degree of credence, of respectability, to what is by all appearances an odious and offensive characterization. The allegations -- "Israel is building an apartheid wall, which will lead to ghettoization" -- are direct and catchy, in spite of all their logical holes. A response which attempts to refute so bold a blanket statement must be nuanced, almost to the point of tediousness, and has no chance of equaling the emotional impact of the original. That, perhaps, is why groups like neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan tend to be ignored rather than argued with directly; most of the time, it seems, we prefer to ignore offensive and untrue statements, content to let them pass unchallenged simply because reasonable people are fully aware of their fallacy.

There is a danger in that practiced ignorance, though, in that when left unchallenged, such ideas can enter the popular discourse and gain a veneer of respectability. It is therefore sometimes incumbent upon reasonable and logical people to make the effort to systematically examine and refute such claims, lest they take root while no one is looking. This is one of those times.

By claiming that Israel is forcing the Palestinians into "ghettoes" by building an "apartheid wall," groups like FPAN hope to conjure up images of firing squads, cattle cars and death camps; of Bantustans, attack dogs and state-mandated racism. Israel is doing nothing of the sort.

The concept of the barrier is not free of moral pitfalls. Serious concerns exist, and they ought to be the subject of serious discussion. To casually throw around inaccurate and inflammatory terms like "apartheid" and "ghettoization," and to make cheap and shallow emotional appeals, as FPAN does, only helps prevent the mutual understanding and reconciliation which are a necessary foundation for peace and security.

Chuck Boyars

College '06

Dassi Sigel

College '06 President of PennPAC

Politics shouldn't be personal

To the Editor:

Michelle Dubert was right in her last column ("Confessions of a Penn conservative," The Daily Pennsylvanian, 03/29/04) when she wrote that "admitting a conservative philosophy shouldn't be so traumatizing." In fact, it shouldn't be traumatizing at all, because politics should be an arena in which people come together for honest, forthright, impersonal debate on the issues.

Unfortunately, our current political culture doesn't seem to allow that. It's much easier for overfunded, power-hungry candidates to resort to salacious, attention-grabbing rhetoric than to strive to educate voters, and as a result, our democracy is hemorrhaging.

In response to a lack of argument, conservatives seem to convince themselves that liberals are "out to get them," with which they justify the hateful smear tactics that have become so characteristic of their politics, i.e. President Bush vs. John McCain in the 2000 South Carolina presidential primary. I encourage liberals all over campus to welcome conservatives to the debating table this campaign season, because with our unemployed and uninsured in the millions and our budget deficit in the billions, it should be an easy enough victory without having to get personal.

Conor Lamb

College '06

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