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To the Editor: 

As the Daily Planet reported, last Thursday the banned Students for Justice in Palestine – using the subterfuge of another student organization's name – held a rally at UCB. Having been in the audience, I can safely say that the verbiage spouted there stood reality on its head. 

The loaded term “genocide” was attributed to the Israelis. Yet while Israel chooses not to use its modern air force to decimate Palestinian civilians, the PLO's covenant, along with Hamas, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad, calls for the elimination of Jews from the Middle East. Indeed, you will find advocacy of genocide against the Jews in grade school books from Syria to Saudi Arabia to Gaza. 

SJP brands Israel an “apartheid society,” yet it is the sole country in the Middle East where Arabic women are permitted to vote. On the other hand, as in other Arabic societies, women are treated as third-class citizenry in Gaza and the West Bank. Indeed, the real apartheid is the treatment of Palestinian women. This includes the not uncommon “honor murders” of daughters who transgress the wishes of their fathers. In Israel, such homicides are punished, while in Palestinian-dominated Jordan and the territories, the murder of said teenagers is either ignored or the perpetrator is given a slap on the wrist. In sum, if SJP is going to brand a society as “apartheid,” they need look no further than the treatment of women in the Palestinian territories. 

Finally, SJP bandies about “human rights violations” with every other sentence. But while they wring their hands over the alleged massacre in Jenin, the investigative group Human Rights Watch has disclosed that this is nothing more than typical Palestinian propaganda. 

In fact, true human rights violations lie elsewhere. The abrogation of human rights is manifest in the treatment of Palestinian children who, from kindergarten on, are both taught that their sworn duty is to “kill Jews” and that there is no higher calling than that of the suicide bombing “martyr.” Given this measure of child abuse, can there be but little wonder that Palestinian children volunteer to be suicide bombers when they become teenagers? 

In sum, the Palestinians have created a pathological society where women and children are regularly abused by their own people. So when SJP uses such toxic terms, they should look first to apply them to those on whose behalf they provide such noxious propaganda. 

- Daniel C. Spitzer 

Berkeley