Imagine that there were riots in Los Angeles right now just like the ones that we saw after the Rodney King verdict. Suppose that in the face of what people saw as a travesty of justice, they took to the streets and smashed stores and offices and attacked the police (which they did in L.A.). Now imagine that in response, the United States called in the army to restore order, firing on civilians with live ammunition, and using Apache helicopters and anti-tank missiles to destroy neighborhoods. Would anyone think this was reasonable? Would anyone blame the rioters for the government's reaction? Would we see 120 dead rioters as bearing the blame for what happened to them?

Stripped of its association with the Arab race, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is an independence struggle between a stateless people and a vastly superior occupying army--not unlike the conflict between Tibet and China. Palestinians are frustrated because they are too weak to win back their freedom. Yet for the most part Americans don't understand why the Palestinians lash out at the Israelis. The reason that Americans don't understand is that they see the Palestinians as part of a hostile mob of Arabs that vastly outnumbers the Israelis. This gives them a distorted picture of who has the power in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict (which we sometimes call the "Arab-Israeli conflict") and leaves them confused as to the source of the hostility.

When it comes to race, Americans have a history. We allowed race to blind us to the real goals of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, and we continue to allow race to blind us to the goals of the Palestinians. But we are not powerless against these habits. By thinking about them and criticizing them, we can rid ourselves of this distorted lens and gain true insight into the aims and aspirations of people in the Middle East.

Waheed Hussain is a student in philosophy at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.