"RUMOR" TELLS THE TRUTH
Many thanks to Geov Parrish for publishing the kind of eyewitness information so lacking in the U.S. media coverage of the Middle East ["A Rumor of War," April 11]. The reason Europeans are more sympathetic to the Palestinians is that the media in the rest of the world reports the facts about Israel's brutal military oppression. The U.S. media, on the other hand, consistently labels all Palestinians "terrorists" and "gunmen"; calls the massive arrests, house destructions, deprivation of food, water, and medical care, and shooting of Palestinian civilians "Israeli incursions"; and rarely mentions the daily atrocities and human rights abuses to which the Palestinians have been subjected for years. Without this smear campaign, it might be difficult to justify the billions of dollars we send Israel every year for the purchase of weapons for human destruction.
Anita Ross
Seattle
BAD BALANCE
Thank you for "A Rumor of War" [April 11]. This thoughtful article avoids polemic and even contains a measure of balance, sympathizing with the fears and histories that might lead the Israeli government to commit its current military assaults.
But what caused you to feel that this piece needed further balancing by printing alongside it an article filled with rancor, sarcasm, distortions, and falsehoods? Samantha M. Shapiro's "What Would King Solomon Do?" is just the sort of polemic that Parrish's article is not. She justifies the Israeli campaign of mass arrests and mass executions by calling it "a reasonable, if regrettable, means of self-defense." Has she forgotten that similar logic was employed by the governments of both apartheid South Africa and Nazi Germany? She repeats the racist calumny that there is no moderate movement among Palestinians, despite the work of Mustapha Barghouti, Ghassan Andoni, and many others, including the nonviolent resistance movement that is the subject of Parrish's article. She parrots the discredited notion that Palestinians have refused offers of coexistence, when the truth is that Palestinians have formally recognized the right of Israel to exist; Yasir Arafat has condemned suicide bombings; [and] Palestinians have offered the considerable compromise of agreeing to have a state on 22 percent of historic Palestine. What they keep refusing is Israel's repeated offer that Palestinians must coexist as second- or third-class subjects of a military dictatorship. Shapiro describes the post-1993 period as "10 years of [Israeli] peacemaking," overlooking that the confiscation of Palestinian land and the building of illegal Israeli settlements were accelerated [and that] Palestinians were still subject to torture, arrest without warrant, and imprisonment without charge or trial for indefinite periods.
Ms. Shapiro's article is filled with racist generalizations about Palestinians and Muslims. Did you publish the article out of fear of being called anti-Jewish? Criticism of Israel is not criticism of the Jewish people. If one of your reporters wrote an article criticizing apartheid, would you scrape around for a balancing article defending the rule of the white minority?
Edward Mast
Seattle
UNFAIR FIGHT
People seem to forget that there are two sides to this story ["A Rumor of War," April 11]. Yes, some of the tactics of the Israeli army are harsh, but the army is not targeting civilians, unlike some suicide bombers that like to hit military targets like buses and restaurants. I find it amazing that Israel is blamed for the occupation when it was the Arab states that invaded Israel in 1967 and continue to lob rockets into city centers. It seems that people are expecting the Israelis to fight fair when the Palestinians are using children to carry out bombings, sending them to "heaven" and waiting for their check from Saddam.
Andrew Johnson
via e-mail
WHAT WOULD SEATTLE DO?
Kudos to Samantha M. Shapiro on her understanding of the Arab-Israeli conflict and her careful explanation of nuances ["What Would King Solomon Do?" April 11]. The militant Islamic worldview is completely opposite from America's principles of equality.
Shame on the Seattle Weekly for hiding Shapiro's words among advertisements and for implying, in the cover photo, that the only "witnesses to war" are Palestinian.
At least Geov Parrish had the grace to admit [in his accompanying article, "A Rumor of War"] that if terrorists prevented Seattleites from going to the QFC or Northgate Mall, as happens in Israel on a sometimes daily basis, we might be taking the same course of action as is Israel.
Hadassah Hospital treats all who are injured by the current situation—terrorists and victims, Arabs and Jews alike. Where are your stories and images of those witnesses to war?
Jill Cohen
Executive Director, Seattle Chapter Hadassah
WHAT'S IN A NAME?
We are deeply disturbed by Christopher Frizzelle's representation of our band, Lev'vela, in last week's Weekly [Music Calendar]. Frizzelle wrote, "You may like Lev'vela so long . . . as your alliance is with Israel"—ignoring the fact that NOTHING in our music, lyrics, or press materials mentions anything about Israel. We are a band whose members' ethnic backgrounds [are] Mexican, Jewish, Native American, and European American, and who support human rights movements through our music.
Mr. Frizzelle unfortunately decided to incorrectly presume that a band that has two Jews and incorporates Hebrew into part of our name must be aligned with the politics of Israel. (We also have Spanish in our name and two Mexicans but for some reason do not get represented as supporters of the Zapatistas!)
