There may be a certain convenience in living in a world where gratuitous insults replace reasoned discourse, where words can mean whatever one wishes and where history can begin whenever one chooses.

This is what Professor Sayres Rudy has to say about people who disagree with him: Abraham Foxman-a "village idiot;" Hillel Halkin-a writer of "bunk;" the undersigned-someone for whom "if six people believe something, it must be true."

To support these aspersions, Rudy invokes a tendentious definition of Zionism that will not be found in any standard dictionary. For him, Zionism is not merely the principle of Jewish statehood but also a conflicted ideology, imposed on others, inseparable from the hideous consequences visited on all the people of Israel and Palestine by unwise Israeli policies as well as by the Arab world's repeated refusal to reconcile itself to coexistence with a Jewish state. (And if he believes that the Arab world has become so reconciled, I'd really like to know his views on resolving the Palestinian right of return.)

Then there is the matter of the 1967 occupation as the root of all evil. Rudy assures us that if only the occupation would end, then peace will blossom. What is one to make of the founding of the Palestine Liberation Organization, with its explicit aim of eradicating Israel through violence, years before the beginning of the occupation? What of the crude bigotry (example: Jews use the blood of children to bake matzah) that has been common fare across the Arab world both before and after the occupation? What of the state of war maintained by the Arab world against Israel from the moment of its creation, and the expulsion by the Arab world of virtually its entire Jewish population?

I fear, sadly, that this exchange of views in The Amherst Student may have passed its point of diminishing returns. For students who have been following the matter, I urge you to read Halkin's piece in its entirety ("The Return of Anti-Semitism," Commentary, February, 2002), or any of the other literature on the subject (there are many, many more than six choices!) and then judge Rudy's words for yourselves.

Professor of Chemistry

Joseph Kushick

Israel and Arafat share responsibility

I agree with Sayres Rudy's main point, namely that it is possible to oppose policies of the state of Israel without being an anti-Semite. But I believe Professor Rudy seriously overreaches when he says, in his Feb. 23 letter to The Amherst Student, "Israel's expansion, settlement, occupation and smokescreen 'peace offerings' since 1967 have proved its unwillingness to relinquish the West Bank or Gaza to Palestinian self-determination under any circumstances."

In the White House in December of 2000, President Clinton and Dennis Ross, with the approval of the then Israeli government under Ehud Barak, offered Yasser Arafat a state on roughly 94 to 95 percent of the territory of the West Bank and Gaza, including Arab East Jerusalem, with some additional territorial compensation from Israel proper. I believe that Arafat's failure to embrace this offer was a tragic error, but this judgment aside, the existence of the offer refutes Professor Rudy's inaccurate view of the policy of the state of Israel quoted above.

Professor of History

and American Studies

N. Gordon Levin, Jr.

The New Athenian wants faculty letters

You, the faculty at Amherst, use the editorial pages of The Student to talk to the campus and to each other. It works, but there's another forum with many advantages.

Letters to the New Athenian, a Web site run by students at note.amherst.edu, are read more often than The Amherst Student: For the last three years, the page has been receiving about 5,000 hits per day.

But hold your prejudice! The New Athenian could not be more different from the Daily Jolt, that commercial enterprise that has scarred campus discourse, costing us in depth, dignity and friendship. All articles on the New Athenian appear under the Amherst e-mail account that posted them, so you can expect there the same accountability you find here in The Student's pages. So far it has been used exclusively by students, but I think enough time has passed for it to have proven itself safe and reliable, so that faculty should give it a chance. In addition to reaching the campus more directly, you would also be able to get accountable responses immediately, instead of having to wait a week for a new issue of The Student to come out.

Lastly, don't worry about infringing on "student space," as the New Athenian is no more cliquish than this newspaper. We want to hear from you. It's as easy as sending an e-mail.

Tal Liron '03