To the editors:

"Hillel Issues Its Stance on the Mideast" (News, Oct. 18) points to the abundance of misunderstanding and misinformation about the current situation in the region. Sadly, however, the article does more to contribute to this misunderstanding than to mitigate it.

In particular, the article's characterization of the opinions of Jewish students is disturbing. One student quoted in the article mentions Jews who are completely unsympathetic to the Palestinian cause in any way, shape or form. As evidence for this startling statement, the article mentions Harvard Students for Israel (HSI), "whose members' opinions tend to be less sympathetic to the Palestinian cause."

In my three years at Harvard, I have never met a Jewish student who is completely unsympathetic to the Palestinian cause. Furthermore, as a member of HSI, I can testify to the political diversity of the group. Most importantly, however, the debate over the recent events in the Middle East is not about one's support for causes, but rather one's beliefs about the legitimacy of violent acts.

Wednesday's article mentions Jews who feared that their relative sympathy for the Palestinian cause was mistaken as anti-Israeli sentiment. Unfortunately, the article makes the same mistake by equating support for Israel with lack of sympathy for Palestinians.

Finally, the article describes the agreement as to a general lack of good information in the U.S. about the history and greater significance of this most recent conflagration. This lack of good information demonstrates itself in the following paragraph, which mentions Ariel Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount accompanied by several hundred armed police officers--accompanied by a handful of bodyguards would have been more accurate.

We can all lament the absence of objective facts about the conflict in the Middle East. We should not have to worry, however, that The Crimson is contributing to this lamentable situation.

D. Cody Dydek '01