Editor’s note: Letters to the Editor and open letters reflect the opinions, concerns and views of University of Wisconsin-Madison students and community. As such, the information presented may or may not be accurate. Letters to the Editor and open letters do not reflect the editorial views or opinions of The Daily Cardinal.
Dear Editor,
Please permit me to provide some historical facts that the signatories of the letter supporting divestment and ceasefire, and other interested parties will find valuable.
The Palestinians were presented with eight separate land for peace offers, one from the UN, one from the U.S. and six from Israel. All eight were rejected without a single responsible counteroffer. The reason was that the Palestinians consider all of Israel to be stolen land and they could not retain their honor if they shared their own land with people they call occupiers. The actual meaning of the word 'occupation' in this context is the existence of Israel.
College demonstrators were celebrating the victory off Hamas over the Jews, the first such victory in 76 years. Their call for a worldwide intifada was a call for more such victories. The call for a cease fire is to permit Hamas to regain its strength and win back control over Gaza to resume attacks on the Israelis who in Article seven of their Charter are to all be murdered. I invite you to read the Hamas Charter which is easily available online.
Support for this terrorist organization means support for rape, beheading and for burning families alive. Surely UW-Madison does not teach these perversions to its student body.
Your pride at being allied with Jewish Voice for Peace is seriously misplaced. Go online to monitor JVP's website, it is full of calls to destroy Israel, and there is nothing at all about peace, not once, not ever.
For the last number of months, you have been exposed to media outlets that accuse Israel of killing 35,000 Gazan women and children. Last week, the UN revised the casualty figures to half, and half might be an exaggeration, because the Gaza Ministry of Health could not provide more than 10,000 names. It would appear that the civilian death count is smaller than the number of Hamas casualties. If any of you study warfare, this would be a first in the history of warfare where civilian casualties are less than combatant deaths, Considering that Hamas fights to maximize deaths and destruction, this would be a remarkable accomplishment.
I invite you to fact check all my assertions, hopefully not with pro-Hamas sources, but with more objective sources. One of these objective sources, the U.S. government just announced that there is no evidence that Israel is carrying out a genocide on the Gazans. I would imagine that each signatory to the letter believes a genocide is going on. If you can believe that, you can believe anything. That's not where you want to be in your lives.
Sincerely yours,
Larry Shapiro
