To the Editor:
I opened Thursday’s Herald to find Nava Winkler’s ’14 column, which I hoped would be another insightful view on the conflict, among the various op-eds and letters to the editor this week. But the opinion unfortunately perpetuated some of the most harmful paradigms around discussion of this issue, and, even more misleading, the column attempted to claim a neutral, apolitical stance.
The writer attempted to paint the situation as complicated and paradoxical, most aptly summarized in the phrase “the reality remains that it’s not that simple.” This attempt to make the conflict too complex to understand whitewashes the occupation and human rights violations that have been perpetrated by Israeli forces. Understanding the nuances of the issue is vastly different from making claims regarding ownership of land, for instance, which obscures the fact that this is indeed an occupation, and 20,000 Palestinian homes have been demolished since 1967. Also, the rhetorical question of “Huh … so what are we fighting about again?” serves to yet again hide Israeli apartheid behind a veil of supposed complexity and lack of lucidity.
This week has fostered extremely productive conversations, even between a few of the protesters and the event planners themselves, who were able to have a dialogue and voice their concerns to each other earlier this week. Columns that attempt to place this conflict in a stagnant impasse or, as the author puts it, “an unconstructive, emotional, hateful mess” and depoliticize a political situation are extremely harmful to the Brown community moving forward.
Peter Makhlouf ’16
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