Dear Editor, The recent initiative to acquaint the student body with the historical and present-day realities of genocide was a commendable effort. However, I was very disappointed to find out that although the organizers mentioned genocide in Rwanda, Darfur, and Bosnia, they failed to shed any light on the genocide that has been perpetrated for 60 years now against the Palestinian people. According to one of the posters set up by the organization in the Driscoll Center, genocide is defined as “the systematic destruction by a government of a racial, religious or ethnic group.” In the last 60 years, the Israeli government has expanded its domains by destroying scores of Palestinian neighborhoods, uprooting hundreds of Palestinian farms and forcibly removing thousands of Palestinian families from their homes, thereby causing millions to emigrate and creating the largest refugee population in the world. Since the year 2000 alone, over 4,700 Palestinians have been killed (including almost 1,000 children), over 10,000 Palestinians have been arrested and over 18,000 Palestinian homes have been demolished. The purpose of this campaign of constant harassment and intimidation has been to ethnically cleanse the Arab population, annihilate all its remnants, and create a Jewish majority state in its place. Some might say that the Palestinian issue is an internal matter, a land dispute or even an irrelevant historic event. But fortunately, as the yard signs placed around campus will continually remind us, genocide by any other name is still a genocide.

Sincerely,

Arsalan RizviDU Sophomorebiochemistry major history minor