Israel needs fence for its security
It’s interesting the sponsors of Palestinian Awareness
Week chose to imitate the security fence Israel is erecting to show
students what it’s like to live with such a barrier.
I would encourage the Israeli advocacy groups to re-enact, in a
similar fashion, the security problems which prompted the
construction of the fence, but putting a bomb on a bus and killing
dozens of innocent people is out of the question. The fact is, the
barrier is the Israeli government’s temporary solution to
protect its citizens that were being attacked almost daily.
Since the erection of the barrier, terrorist attacks have
dramatically decreased and most attempted attacks are more easily
foiled. It is without a doubt that the barrier creates hardships,
economic or otherwise, for many Palestinians and Israelis alike.
But waiting in line to get to where you’re going is temporary
whereas as being blown up while trying to get to there is not.
Gal Sitty Third-year, economics
“˜God’ has clear cultural
meaning
Dylan Tyagi wrote a letter arguing there is no reason to remove
“God” from the Pledge of Allegiance because “God
can be defined as a person or thing of supreme value”
(“God can be defined in many ways,” April 9). As a
Christian, I am willing to accept “supreme value” as a
description of God. However, I have to disagree with him, as the
word “God” has specific religious connotations. If
the word “Allah” replaced “God,” most
Americans would be very upset because we are not used to using
the term, which has specific cultural and religious
connotations.
As unaware as we are, the word “God” carries those
connotations for many people. When most of us hear the word,
what comes to mind, as Bishop John Shelby Spong observed, is
“a being, supernatural in power, dwelling outside this world
and invading … to accomplish the divine will.” That
hardly sounds like “supreme values” to me.
“God” is a theologically loaded word, and it is
unrealistic to think we can shrug off the alienation it can cause
for those not of the Judeo-Christian tradition. We ought to
respect their stances rather than ask them to mold their vocabulary
to our lip-service.
Sonja Anderson First-year, religion studies