To the editors:

I was appalled to read Faisal Chaudry’s racist op-ed in which he calls Israel’s control over the West Bank and Gaza Strip a “racist colonial occupation.” He also tries to play the race card by describing “white Israeli soldiers destroy[ing] refugee camps of the brown people they have dispossessed for decades.” He seems to forget that hundreds of thousands of Jewish Israelis are from Ethiopian and Arab nations. To reduce the Mideast conflict to racism shows a lack of understanding or an extreme oversimplification.

Chaudry also seems to forget that Israel is not after every Palestinian—it wants to live in peace with the Palestinian people and a Palestinian nation but cannot do so while powerful terrorist factions exist in Palestinian society.

But using Chaudry’s logic, we can now define other groups as “racist.” I am assuming he would say that Americans are racist because they support the destruction of al-Qaeda. This is a ridiculous accusation.

Chaudry claims that Arafat can do little to stop terror because of his “eroding power.” Are we supposed to feel bad for Arafat, a man who pays off the families of suicide bombers and whose own political party is responsible for numerous terrorist attacks on Israelis?

Raphael Nemes ’05

April 11, 2002