It is interesting to me that in a letter asking Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) to more adequately address both sides of the issue, the authors do not attempt to contextualize the cartoon they so strongly criticized, the cartoon that was a major part of Romain’s opening comments. A Brazilian artist created the cartoon in March of 2008 in response to Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai’s comment that the Palestinians will bring a holocaust on themselves if Hamas continues firing missiles at Israel. While I will not argue that either party should have invoked the term or an image associated with it, for Glasser and Swerdlow, who have stated that they want all sides of complicated situations to be addressed, to decry the image as “offensive” without addressing the situation in which it arose is hypocritical. Furthermore, I take issue with the authors’ conflation of the word “holocaust” with the Jewish holocaust. Just as no one group can claim to have a monopoly on suffering and oppression, the Jewish holocaust should not have a monopoly on the term when millions of other peoples have suffered (and, indeed, continue to suffer) from lesser recognized acts of genocide regardless of the scope.

Some will argue that it is hypocritical of me as a member of SJP to criticize Glasser and Swerdlow for not addressing all sides of a contentious debate when I have participated in events that do not always live up to this standard. SJP’s mission statement, however, does not express this interpretation of “objectivity” as one of the group’s values. Rather, the group is dedicated specifically to “illuminating the many human rights violations in this region because of the dearth of information in the American media about Palestinian suffering in the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel proper as well as the surrounding Arab states” (“Amherst Students Seek to Expose Palestinian Plight,” Issue 11, The Student). We do not purport to tell all sides of the story and are very open about that fact with our audiences. I agree with Glasser and Swerdlow that “[Amherst students] should know to question all sources and strive to understand the greater picture and deeper implications of the information before us.” We conceive events like our recent multimedia exhibit and panel in the hopes not that people merely read our posters or listen to our speakers and decide to become unbending vigilantes for the Palestinian cause, but that these displays and discourses will encourage participants to delve further into the issues at hand. We want to be the starting-off point for substantive debates, not the final word. Because of this value, we have been very careful not to pretend to objectivity, as the very mainstream media sources we criticize do, in our group’s actions. Obviously members of the group have opinions and agendas that our events reflect, but I do not think that the group should be criticized for that when its members are up-front about our intentions, and our mission statement very clearly explains those intentions.

-Claire Rann ’09