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Solution to come from Israelis and Palestinians 

Editor: 

I feel compelled to respond to a letter to the editor published in Monday’s edition. Barbarous syntax aside, Leo Breiman’s letter about the Students for Justice in Palestine was rife with unfounded accusations and utterly baffling propositions. He makes oblique reference to our “tactics” without ever delineating what exactly are those tactics he finds so objectionable. 

Peacefully occupying the office of the Daily Cal along with other student organizations while waiting for the editorial board to apologize for a racist cartoon hardly constitutes a call to violence. In response to his most ludicrous claim, I challenge Mr. Breiman to produce evidence of an SJP member ever advocating the “destruction of the state of Israel.” (Perhaps he has confused SJP with an obsolete PLO charter.) I suggest he consult the SJP Mission Statement.  

Mr. Breiman demonstrates a poor grasp of how Israeli/American political decisions are actually made. His plan is for SJP to meet with unspecified Jewish groups to draft a proposal for a resolution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that would be “favorably received by Israeli and American-Jewish groups.” Apparently the needs and concerns of Arabs are of no significance at all.  

Any lasting resolution must come from the Palestinian Arabs and Israelis who live there.  

SJP is concerned with university divestment from Israel, not with brokering diplomatic accords. Moreover, the commitment of these Jewish groups to “peace” can be evinced in the disgraceful behavior of the Israeli Action Committee and Jewish Student Union in support of the pro-war rally on the UC Berkeley campus on Sept. 25, 2001 (which was a thinly veiled pro-Israel, pro-America rally) who used obscenities and chanted “coward” at a Muslim student who was silently protesting.  

Cheryl Leung, 

Students for Justice in Palestine 

SJP-UC Berkeley