Recognize Israel’s culpability in the Palestinian conflict By Karen Weingarten David Dreilinger’s wespeak on the checkpoints held by Students for a Free Palestine illustrates a core problem among people who argue that Israel is not to blame for the current Israeli/Palestinian conflict—they don’t listen. David accused the checkpoint simulation of demonstrating “unapologetic contempt for Israel” and suggesting that “Israelis unfurl a red carpet for crazed Hamas, Islamic Jihad….” The only correct observation that David made about our action is that we are unapologetic; but that’s because we hold no contempt for Israel as a state, but for the gross human rights violations committed daily at these checkpoints. David seems to think that the documentation of these human rights is pure propaganda, he compared it to an article published this past summer describing a female Israeli soldier dancing naked on top of cars so that she could lure Palestinians towards her and then shoot them. I remember when this article was published because I was then working at B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization that has received international acclaim for its impartial observation of human rights violations in the Occupied Territories. When the members of B’Tselem saw the article on the nude Israeli soldier they laughed at its absurdity and the lack of documentation proving that this act had occurred. Conversely, numerous B’Tselem field workers have observed, and thoroughly documented, cases where Israeli soldiers cruelly treated Palestinians at checkpoints—not allowing women in labor and ill people to pass through for medical care, cruelly harassing and beating Palestinians, and unjustly preventing family members from reuniting are just some of the things that have been witnessed by B’Tselem and other human rights organization (see last week’s Wespeak that I wrote with Shireen Tawil in which we listed human rights organizations that document such cases). My point is simple—I am not demanding that Israel eradicate its checkpoints, but that the human rights violations that occur at these checkpoints stop immediately. David spends quite a few paragraphs condemning the Palestinian Authority and Arafat. For the most part I agree with him that the PA is a corrupt institution that needs to be reformed, but David then makes a wide leap in solely equating the PA’s inadequacies to the economic and political problems occurring in Palestine. Israel is the country in power that chooses to use its power to oppress, Israel is the country that relies on a cheap labor market that is conveniently found in the territories, and Israel is the country that systematically denies Palestinians a state that is not intertwined with settlements and roads that make the envisioned country look more like a series of islands than a unified territory. When these factors, along with the fact that the Palestinians have been a colonized people since the days of the Ottoman Empire, how can Palestinians begin to create an economy as a unified autonomous country? I just wish that David would listen more to what Students for a Free Palestine are saying, instead of quickly assuming that we are anti-Israel and just another tool of propaganda. The conflict in Israel/Palestine is a sensitive one, but that is all the more reason why we need to start putting our ideal depictions of Israel as an accepting and not oppressive state behind us. Weingarten is a member of the class of 2002

editorial letters uncertainty now Many options with initiative and the University Major All things must pass: Beatle George Harrison, 1943-2001 Recognize Israel’s culpability in the Palestinian conflict Acquiescence fails to get out message and create dialogue  Border guard demonstration realistic, not offensive Campaign finance is a civil rights issue Hemp dinner at Earth House “Band” banned at 230 Washington

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