David Friedman's column on Friday, April 16 (Israel offers hope for human rights), contained several errors that must be corrected. I do not have enough room to deconstruct Friedman's entire column, which was filled with misinformation, so I have picked the most serious and pertinent mistakes to address.
Friedman's column protested fliers around campus that lamented the death of activist Rachel Corrie, who was crushed by an Israeli bulldozer supplied by the Caterpillar Company in the Rafah Refugee Camp, located in the Gaza Strip. The Gaza Strip is occupied by Israel, not inside of Israel.
Next, Friedman writes that Corrie, ... was a member of the International Solidarity Movement
a group known to sympathize with Palestinian terrorists receive funds from the extremist group Hamas
and has even been known to harbor suicide bombers.
Corrie did volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement. The ISM, however, is a non-violent human rights organization that works to monitor Israeli breaches of international law and tries to defend Palestinian civilians from Israeli military operations in the occupied Palestinian territories. There is absolutely no evidence that the International Solidarity Movement supports or condones terrorism of any kind, accepts donations from Hamas or harbors terrorists.
Friedman continues that, ... Corrie was standing in front of an emptied house that Israel was preparing to bulldoze because it housed the family of a suicide bomber. Multiple eyewitnesses and human rights organizations say Corrie was protecting the house of Dr. Samir Masri, a Gaza physician. Friedman makes an obvious observation that the house was empty, but his does not mean the house was uninhabited. The house was empty because the family did not want to be buried alive. Secondly, Masri had no connection to terrorism. Israel wanted to bulldoze the Masri household because it was near the Egyptian border, a very strategic location.
Next, Friedman says, Palestinian suicide bombers purposefully target innocent civilians
and Israel has a right to combat this terrorism.
There is no question that all attacks on civilians are war crimes. Those that perpetrate them, be they Israeli or Palestinian, must be tried in a court of justice.
Friedman begins his last paragraph with the statement, I believe Israel makes mistakes
but it acts in good faith toward human rights.
Does Israeli good faith mean 8,000 Palestinian home demolitions since 1967, land confiscation, killing or severely maiming American college students, constructing Jewish-only settlements on Palestinian land, extra-judicial executions, torture, using live ammunition on peaceful protesters and building a 20-foot-high wall on Palestinian land, a wall condemned by the United Nations General Assembly and Amnesty International?
I urge everyone to question why your hard-earned money is going to a nation whose army has killed more than 2,800 Palestinians in the past three years, almost 500 of them children.
Send e-mail to jordan.robinson@ohiou.edu.
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Jordan Robinson
